Jurassic Park

Executive Summary: One of Michael Crichton's best. There's a good reason why Jurassic World made so much money last year. Our fascination with dinosaurs. Crichton does a good job capturing that here.Audiobook: Scott Brick does a good job as always. His voice for Lex is so good as to be obnoxious and I found myself yelling at her to shut up just like her brother.Full ReviewThis is one of those rare books I read after the movie. I read it sometime in high school. I don't exactly remember when. However, I remember seeing the movie the first time vividly. I was not quite 11 years old. The perfect age really. I convinced my mother to take me to see it while my sister was away at camp. The movie both fascinated and terrified me. It's one of the few movies that have stuck with me so vividly over the years.By the time I got to reading the book I was a bit older, and that same sense of wonder had started to wear off. I was too young to enjoy the pseudo-science, and the action in my imagination just didn't live up to my memories of the movie. It was a good book, but “the movie was better”.With the 25th anniversary last year, a new audiobook got released, and I was interested to revisit the book. It was a lot better than I remember. I enjoyed the “science” better this time around, although the computer related stuff made me go: “Yeah that's what you get for tampering with such a complex system” a lot.It's been a long time since I've seen the movie now, and I plan to revisit it. This seems like one of those rare movies that doesn't tweak too much from the book. It's almost as though Mr. Crichton wrote it to be made into a movie. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that was true.My favorite Crichton book is [b:Timeline 7669 Timeline Michael Crichton https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405420745s/7669.jpg 1525987] (whose movie adaptation is absolutely awful), but this book is probably my second favorite. The way he uses pseudo-science to create thrillers seems unmatched. This series is arguably his most successful. He takes our childhood fascination with dinosaurs to the next level. He also highlights the arrogance of men. You might think if given the chance, we'd be smarter than the characters in the book, but I'm not sure that'd be true. I fully believe if it were possible to recreate dinosaurs some greedy idiot would totally do it. There is part of me that'd want to visit the park too. Meanwhile the rest of my brain is screaming what a terrible idea it all is.All and all, this book is a fun ride full of wonder, terror and a lot of stupidity. I'm glad I revisited the book.