I'm only about halfway through this book and have already developed a love/hate relationship with it. Because you should always end on a positive, I'll start with the ugly.
This is very much (at least to me) a "guy" book. The beginning starts out really interesting because we find out about our main character (Louis Zamperini) and how he grew up, how he became an Olympic runner, joined the army, etc. That's all very interesting and fine. But then we get to Louie's time spent in Army Air Corps and this is where I started to lose interest...there's lots of talk about fighter planes, how they work, who does what, introductions to characters that never go anywhere, etc. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who lose their sh*t over this...but I do not. To me it feels like the author loves a good tangent and frequently goes off on them.
My second beef with the book was brought to my attention by a co-worker...the author feels like she's aching for this book to be made into a movie. There are some parts that are SO spectacular in detail that it's almost unbelievable. It definitely makes for good reading, but I almost feel like she could have written a screenplay and that would have been sufficient.
BUT, all the above being said...I really enjoy this book a lot. I can't wait to read it and find out what happens next. Now that we've moved out of training camp and are into the meat of the novel, I can't put the book down. Reading about the 40+ days they were floating at sea was very cool...I almost missed my bus stop because I was so absorbed in the book at that point. I'm now in the part of the book where Louie is at a Japanese POW camp and it's equally captivating. Without giving anything away, it's very interesting to learn how cruel people can be, how clever other people are, and generally how they kept their wits about themselves in a terrible situation.
More to come when I finish the book this weekend!
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