great book to kick off my summer

I love reading, but I am the slowest reader I know.  My favorite books as a child were "Misty of Chincoteague" and the Billy and Blaze series; admittedly, I was mainly fascinated with the illustrations.  The SRA reading program in third grade nearly buried me, as I languished in the color red or orange far longer than was considered "healthy" by my teacher.  Worse than the teacher's disapproval was the very public evidence of my failure to thrive.  Even casual visitors to the class could pinpoint who the strugglers were.  When I consider my entire third grade experience, I can only remember my SRA phobia; in fact, I don't think we did anything else in third grade; it can only be that the teacher neglected the other subjects that round out the third grade curriculum, subjects such as geometry, world history, and whatever else one should learn in third grade.  One simply could not fake it in the SRA program; the designers made sure of that by including something spirit-crushing called "comprehension".  As my anxiety grew over my constant companion Orange, my comprehension suffered further.  While I could recite for anyone the dictionary definition of any and every word in the reading selection, the words would not cooperate with me enough to provide a sense of understanding, and no one was standing at my shoulder asking me to define the word "abject" or its companion "misery."  Alas, reading comprehension has ever since been my achilles heel.

Which quite naturally leads to my recommendation for a good read.  I just finished "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand, a jaw-dropping narrative about an American World War 2 POW.  It's the perfect antidote for anyone who doesn't believe in survival against all odds. You'll not get a thorough summary from me, of course, since I only understood 63% of what I read.  And if you ask me, "Why do you think Louie wanted to return to Japan after all the physical and psychological torture he suffered there?" I will have to turn the question around and instead give you a definition of "psychological torture."  (Just investigate "SRA Reading Program" for that.)