Travels

Begins with a very entertaining first third about Crichton's days in medical school, punctuated with humorous stories about life in school and the various foibles of the medical world. The book transitions to the titular travels section, which includes anecdotes and stories of varying interest, ranging from fairly uninteresting stories of Scuba dives that stood out in Crichton's memory, to more interesting tales of life with strange peoples in Thailand, Indonesia, as well as animals in Congo, to finally a frankly strange number of stories about Crichton's interactions with the paranormal world (ranging from psychics, to seances, to hypnotisms, to numerology) all of which Crichton presents himself as incredulous toward but ultimately seems to believe on some level. Crichton, who obviously found great success in every portion of his career, writes with an arrogance that is more tolerable in the works of writers like Anthony Bourdain or Richard Feynman, but considering Crichton's full-time career was being a writer (as opposed to chef or physicist) his anecdotes are almost always engaging and narratively well-constructed at the very least.

This was some weird stuff. Purportedly all true, I have my doubts about some of it. But it was all fascinating.