The best thing about my book is… (could also be flipped to “The worst thing about my book is…”)

     The book I am reading right now is Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell. It is an autobiography about Marcus Luttrell, a US SEAL. I'm only about half way through the book, but so far, he is explaining how he is coming to be a SEAL. He went through some of his childhood and how it impacted him, and the BUD/S training.
     The worst thing about my book is all the little details that are put in, explaining some of the not so exciting missions. Or going into way too much detail on a minor part of an event. I actually found the book pretty hard to get into because of that. I really like books that start off with a really good lead and keep it good throughout the whole novel. An example from the text that shows how way too much detail for a minor event is overwhelming and unneeded is, "We headed east-northeast for four hundred miles, forty-five thousand feet above the Arabian Sea. We crossed the sixty-first line of longitude in the small hours of morning. That put us due south of the Iranian border seaport of Gavater, where the Pakistan frontier runs down to the ocean," (Luttrell, 45). Even though it is a very well writing portion, I feel that it is too much detail for such a minor event. Not many people, unless they are very good at geography, would really know where the sixty-first line of longitude are. So, I felt that that detail was irrelevant. Well writing, but irrelevant.
     The best thing about my book is how action-packed it is. I knew that it was an autobiography when I picked it up, but it still amazes me how much he had to go through. I knew that training to be a SEAL is tough, but I never knew how tough. I am extremely intrigued when reading this section of his novel because I can't believe that people are actually put through this as training. I thought that conditioning for soccer was bad, but that might as well be a walk in the park compared to what he had to go through. A good example from the text that shows how action-packed the novel is is, "...a coliseum where someone was about to bring on the lions. Before us was the five-point screening test:
1. A 500-yard swim, breaststroke or sidestroke in 12 minutes, 30 seconds
2. A minimum of 42 push-ups in 2 minutes
3. A minimum of 50 sit-ups in 2 minutes
4. A minimum of 6 dead-hand pull-ups
5. A 1.5 mile run in 11 minutes, 30 seconds, done while wearing boots and long pants," (Luttrell, 99-100). I can't imagine having to do all of that. And this is considered the more mild of training that they are put through. I am extremely excited to get to the portion of the book where Marcus and his team actually go into combat.