Hello friends! Have a few minutes so…thought I’d write a couple words on my latest.

85. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. It was an interesting experience reading this one. Obviously I’ve seen the movie (many years ago!), a true classic. And I believe I did read this book way back in the day, likely when I was a teenager or shortly thereafter. So the story framework was there in my head. Yet in my memory, this book was a massive tome dense with science and suspense. In actuality? A fairly typical thriller and not that thick of a book after all. It had some fun original ideas and obviously the Ian Malcolm character performs an important function as both authorial insert and source of the thematic core for the book. Maybe I just have changed in my tastes since I read this last, but this book just seemed remarkably average. The writing was pedestrian and the characters pretty one-note. From what I remember with Crichton, the nerd bits are always the most fun, and so it proved here, from the discussions on cloning dinosaurs to explaining ancient computer systems! I enjoyed those parts and I do appreciate Crichton’s schtick of running to ground the way science and new technologies can go oh so terribly wrong. Now I feel like I need to see the movie again! Also one more note. As someone who is now no longer a teenager or in school, I can speak with a little bit of real-world knowledge as both engineer and someone with knowledge of hazardous operations. The engineering and science reps in this book are absolutely abysmal at their jobs and I found myself horrified time and time again at their attitudes and actions. They still didn’t deserve to be eaten though.