Jurassic Park (1990)

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I listened to this on Audible

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A Stunning Book.

Michael Crichton is a pure genius.

The story flowed like a river. It was intense from the start and I don’t say that often about stories so trust that I mean it. It just simply never let up. You must experience this audiobook. This story compares to no story I’ve listened to before. It was just unique and enjoyable. I loved it. You might be thinking, well I’ve seen the movie so that’s good enough. Wrong! The book is nothing like the movie. Nothing like it. So get the book, or listen to this audiobook. You’d be doing yourself a favor.

Scott Brick does a masterful job reading this story. You can practically hear his heart thundering in his chest as he takes you deeper and deeper into the story. ( )

I read this years ago and absolutely loved it.

Here there be dinosaurs.

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***WARNING: Minor spoilers, nitpicking and ranting ahead***



First of all, let me stress that this is a very enjoyable book. It is ably written, quite thrilling and hard to put down. I remember loving the film back in the day, but never realised how much old Spielberg actually changed. Good to learn Crichton didn't actually have people's head bitten off whilst sitting on the toilet. So yeah, Steve hollywood'd it up real good, not sure if I would still enjoy the movie as much as I did: books have that effect.

Not that the book is a whopping scientific revelation. Don't get me wrong, it was pretty interesting, especially if you like dinosaurs. But sometimes I was just a little bothered by things that seemed far fetched, bizarre or plain stupid. And I do like dinosaurs, it boggles my mind how a whole class of animals could vanish like that. Basically, extinct animals make me sad. Anyway, because of this I was getting a little annoyed at some of the things happening at Jurassic Park. I mean, the people designing Jurassic Park were obviously drunk. Somehow, you can only turn main power on in a random maintenance building in the middle of the jungle, adjacent to the raptor area. Of course, when the power is off, the electric fences are off and what you got then is a swarm of velicoraptors blocking your way. This calls for suicide missions into the shed, which is of course dark as fuck inside, and for some reason also filled with hungry dinosaurs. Nevertheless, mostly everyone is willing to do this. Everyone is always volunteering to go on these crazy quests, which leads me to believe that everyone must be drunk on this island.
But wait, there is a back up generator, for emergency electricity. That should solve things, right? Well, actually, the auxiliary power runs everything except the electrified fences to keep the dinos in place. Which makes me wonder what the hell it is for in the first place. To keep the vending machine going? Maybe to keep the freezers in the kitchen running, because they were still on. Priorities. Yeah.

By the way, the power was off, because Dennis Nedry(who is one of the coolest characters in the movie), the guy who designed the computer system, turned it off. He turned it off so he could go steal some dino embryos. So wait, he turns off all the electricity on the fences, and then he goes into the park. In the dark. During a storm. Hey, that's not very smart. This computer system can do a lot, you can tickle the Tyrannosaur Rex's anus with the push of a button, so to speak. But you can't turn the power back on. Hmm.

How do the dinos get out anyway? Somewhere in the book it's mentioned that every enclosure was surrounded by trenches, filled with water. Not to mention the high voltage fences. It's also mentioned that the animals wouldn't try to break out because they know they would get shocked if they touched the fence (somehow hovering over the trenches). Buuut, they do it anyway. Of course, it is later revealed that the T-Rex can swim, which I find a little hard to believe, considering it has those tiny retard-frontpaws. But there they are, swimming, which makes digging trenches filled with water a little useless.

Rexy and the Raptors are quite something. For some reason they have to kill everything they see (maybe they are drunk too). The T-Rex makes it his (her, whatever) business to destroy Dr. Grant and the two kids. He kills a big dinosaur, eats some of it and takes a nap. He then hears the girl shout (she can get quite annoying at times, she really deserved to have some limbs bitten off) and gets up and starts swimming, following the raft. He follows them through the jungle and shows up EVERYWHERE. It gets a little annoying. It's also a little weird, it's like a tiger going through countless efforts to kill some mice. He can also use his tongue to catch kids, like some kind of chameleon.

The raptors have even more superpowers, though. They are really intelligent. They can jump like a kangaroo on a trampoline. They can also see in the dark, because they are apparently nocturnal. Dr. Grant tells us this, they are nocturnal animals. How the hell do you know that, Dr. Grant? Did you see it in their BONES? In short they are superkillingmachines. Oh and by the way, Dr. Grant, there are a lot of reptiles who can reproduce asexually. We don't even need your sex change frog theory, man.

I should probably stop ranting, because as I said, it really is a nice book to read, if you can manage not to think to hard about the details. Just have to mention that John Hammond is a bit of a dick and Dr. Malcolm with his chaos theory visions isn't really quite the oracle he is made out to be. I mean the park was just a disaster, it would've totally worked if no one had been drunk. But what can you do?


PS: Dear America, please stop using feet and the like. It's hard enough for me to imagine 6 metres, never mind '20 feet'. This book got me counting in basketball players. I figured, 7 ft is 2 metres or something. So 20 ft is three basketball players standing on each other's head. Let me tell you, it doesn't really paint the picture.
3.725/5
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This book is the perfect blend of reality and imagination. I applaud Michael Crichton- this concept is solid as well as reasonable. This book includes all of the character's perspectives, which I find a little confusing at times, but does an awesome job of telling the story. There is equality of all types, as there are two strong female characters, and the book takes place on an island near Costa Rica. The only thing is that this book includes lots of gore, people and animals dying, and a single sexual reference necessary for the storyline. I therefore recommend this to anyone ten years old and above. ( )