Title: Jurassic Park

Author: Michael Crichton

Category: Fiction

Page Count: 404

Rating: 4/5

I’d had this one on my radar for a while, but I didn’t actually pick it up until I did a video with Suzie where we swapped books from each other’s TBR. That means that we both read it as a kind of buddy read, although she was near the end of the audio book by the time that I finally picked it up.

It was a little slow to start, but it’s definitely one of those that builds over time. There’s also the fact that some of the science here and there is showing its age by now, although you have to give a little leeway to a book that’s already a quarter of a century old.

As for the book itself, it was surprisingly good. I’m not particularly au fait with the movie, although I have seen it once or twice, and so that gave me the advantage of reading it as though for the first time, except for the heavy foreshadowing that felt a bit obvious. When you’re going into a book like this, you’re expecting dinosaurs, and so it gets kind of irritating to repeatedly be confronted by characters who don’t believe in the things.

But in a way, the characters’ reticence to accept a dinosaur outbreak is actually a good thing, because it makes the book feel more grounded and realistic. I think it’s a very human thing to be suspicious of claims like that, and you also have to remember that this was written before the fake news era in which people arguably had higher rates of trust towards press outlets and companies.

I’m assured that there’s some stuff here that isn’t in the film, although I couldn’t tell you what that is. Judging it solely as a book though, I think it did a pretty good job of bringing the story to life, and I found myself easily able to visualise the action as it rolled off the pages and into my brain. I also had pictures in my head of key characters, and I’m pretty sure that they’re disconnected from the actors that played them.

So yeah, I’d recommend this one if you get a chance, and it’s also a pretty good alternative to Peter Benchley’s Jaws, because both books have similar mouthfeels and this one is better.

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