Unbroken

I just finished this book and can't recommend it highly enough!  It's the best book I've read in a long time.  I decided some time ago that historical novels are my favorite kind of reading.  You get to read a story that's interesting and easy to read, but get a history lesson at the same time (one that doesn't feel like a history lesson at all since it's a novel, see?)  This mans story is incredible, inspirational, and drop-your-jaw unbelievable.  At one point he is floating on a raft in the middle of the Pacific ocean literally kicking sharks away.
Ya know how when you were a little kid and you went to a pro baseball game, piano concert, ballet, or saw olympic gymnasts on t.v. and all of a sudden you were begging your parents for lessons and it was completely 100% your life ambition to be a baseball player, pianist, ballerina, or gymnast?  Just because what you saw them doing was that cool?  Well, this book inspired the writer in me.  Because someday I would love to be able to produce a piece of writing that is this cool.  And that, I think, is quite the compliment to Laura Hillenbrand.