This man has become my new favorite author, alongside Stephen King, my first love. I recently finished reading Jurassic Park and Lost World, both of which were read in under two days. I highly recommend that you pick up these classics and throw what you know from the movies out the window. It is a totally different experience. I don’t know why the characters were changed so much for the movies, but the story itself is somewhat different…more so in Lost World. Here are some major differences:

Jurassic Park:

-Dr. Grant and Dr. Sadler were NOT an item

-Dr. Grant WAS very fond of kids

-Ian Malcolm and  John Hammond are MUCH more eccentric

-Lex is younger and much more strong-willed (nice word for stubborn little B*)

-Tim is the older brother and is the brains, although still very interested in dinosaurs

Lost World:

-John Hammond is NOT involved. Period.

-Sarah Harding is a more predominant character, as others

-Arby and Kelly’s characters replace Ian Malcolm’s kid from the movie, and are not related to anyone

-Lewis Dodgson from Jurassic Park (the restaurant scene with Nedry), is another character that makes his way back for this book

My next Summer read was The Andromeda Stain. Although this book was interesting to a point, I didn’t enjoy it as much as the last two. I personally felt bogged down by all the medical jargon, and had a hard time weeding out what seemed to be a lot of useless information, like the graphs and print-outs from the research conducted by the scientists in the story. As a graduate of Harvard Medical University, I have no doubt that Michael Crichton considers what he wrote to be layman’s terms. However, me being a student of art and design, found it a little difficult to follow at times. If you’ve ever watched the tv show, Numbers, you might get the same feeling from this book. Like when Charlie (Numbers) discusses the theory of Mathematics and then gives an example of real-world use for us to easily understand. Anyways, if you like end-of-the-world type stories, as I do, or a little suspense and detective-work, you’ll enjoy this book. At 330 pages, it’s a lite read for the Summer.

My next book that I will be reading is Ice Station by Matthew (Matt) Reily, the first in the “Shane Schofield (Scarecrow)” series.