I have a new hero

Just in time for a new school year, which is great because I could use some inspiration.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.

Next time I think I'm inconvenienced or put upon, I'll just be grateful that I'm not in a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean fighting sharks, dodging bullets (shot at SIX times by the Japanese) and breaking the necks of fetid birds for sustenance.  For FORTY-SEVEN days.

Actually, I think a more fitting title for Louis Zamperini's biography would be relentless.  It hurts just to listen to it.

If you don't have the patience to watch the above clip, or for some reason are just uninterested, let me tell you this about Louis Zamperini:

1. Olympic runner (shins slashed by meanies while running and still qualified)
2. bomber pilot in WWII
3. crashed into Pacific and survived on raft with two, then eventually one, fellow soldiers for FORTY-SEVEN days
4. all that stuff above about the sharks, bullets and putrid birds PLUS
5. sunburn, starvation and hallucinations
6. finally rescued, but not really because the Japanese found him and he became a prisoner of war
7. EXCEPT that the Japanese used some fancy thinking to claim he was not a prisoner of war but a person with necessary intelligence (or some term I forget) so, you know, rules of war didn't apply and he was tortured

I could go on, but that's as far as I've gotten.  

Oops, forgot one strange twist of fate: one of his captors was a college friend who was actually working as a spy during their college days.

Oh yeah.

Like Seabiscuit (Hillenbrand's earlier book), this bio screams to be made into a movie - and - it is.  All I know Angelina Jolie will direct it.

And just look at this little cutie, still spunky at 95!