Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (CBR-IV #4)

Cannonball Read IV: Book #4/52
Published: 1991
Pages: 480 (1,751 total pages this year)
Genre: Fiction/Thriller


I am terrified of dinosaurs. I frequently have nightmares where they take over my house and eat me. My friend convinced me to ride the Dinosaur ride at Disney World in college and I actually huddled in a ball on the floor of the ride sobbing. I fully blame my 3rd grade teacher for showing the class Jurassic Park in school. Hm...showing a freaking terrifying PG-13 movie to a bunch of 8-year-olds without parental permission? Yayyyyy public school in the 90s! Anyways, even though I was traumatized as a child, I now absolutely love Jurassic Park. 


I read the book sometime back in college and loved it. I'm one of those people who can read a book or watch a movie and immediately forgot almost everything about it except whether I liked it or hated it. Therefore I have no problems re-reading books because I generally have forgotten almost everything besides the basic plot. This irritates my husband to no end because it means I can watch a movie 400 times and not get tired of it. 


Okay, back to Jurassic Park (the book). I'm pretty sure everyone knows the plot -- crazy, rich, old man recreates dinosaurs from DNA to open a dino theme park. Things don't go as planned and the dinosaurs get out and eat people. Main characters include paleobotanist grad student Ellie Saddler, paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, pre-hipster hipster mathematician Ian Malcolm, crazy old man's grandkids, Tim and Lex, and a few other minor characters. 

I really do love this book and think it's one of Crichton's best works (if not THE best). Tons of action and only minor bits of dry scientific crap (usually when Malcolm opens his mouth -- a shame since he was always my favorite in the movie). There is just a constant sense of fear and apprehension the whole time you're reading. The characters are really well done too. You actually get to know the characters and care whether or not they live or die. I've had issues with other Crichton books not having enough character development. And again, I love an author who has the balls to kill off main characters (the book  still has some surprises even if you've seen the movie).

Overall, this is one of those books I'll probably keep going back to every few years. It's a little campy, but a whole of lot of fun and excitement. Now I'm just going to sleep with my lights on for a week and hope I don't dream about a T-rex eating me through my bedroom window.

Congo by Michael Crichton (CBR-IV #3)

Cannonball Read IV: Book #3/52
Published: 1980
Pages: 496 (1,271 total pages this year)
Genre: Fiction/Thriller

In Congo, an American technology company sends a team deep into the Congo rainforest to find a lost city that supposedly has a blue diamond mine. The first team doesn't fare to well and are all killed by having their skulls crushed. So, another team is sent out to figure out what happened. Turns out there are some crazy killer gorillas out in the middle of the Congo. 

It is a Crichton book, so of course there's a lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo that I couldn't understand if I tried. Somehow Crichton figured out how to make a scientific thriller readable to just about anyone. I still can't figure out his secret, but I just keep reading his books despite my hatred for science. However, somewhere along the line he did figure out how to better balance the science with the rest of the book. This one was much less dry than some of his earlier works. 

I liked the Indiana Jones type of jungle adventure with the old temples in the forgotten city and the search for diamonds. I was also highly entertained by the horribly outdated technology (the book was published in 1980). They were constantly bragging about their 256k of RAM.


Overall, the book was a pretty decent adventure novel. I'm having trouble thinking of what to write because it was pretty much a middle-of-the-road Crichton novel. I liked it better than The Andromeda Strain, but less than Sphere or Jurassic Park. If your're a Crichton fan, read it. If not, try one of his others before Congo.

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (CBR-IV #2)

Cannonball Read IV: Book #2/52
Published: 1969
Pages: 327 (775 total pages this year)
Genre: Fiction/Thriller


I guess I'm on a Michael Crichton kick (I just started Congo). I've had this book for a while, but never picked it up. I love biological terror books (The Hot Zone, The Stand), but somehow never got around to reading The Andromeda Strain. I assumed it would be more like The Stand, with it being fictional and all, however, it was more scientifically driven like the non-fiction The Hot Zone.


Basically, the government has been sending satellites to outer space to bring back foreign organisms. They have a very elaborate plan in motion just in case a satellite brings back a biological disease that effects humans. It involves a small scientific team being summoned to a remote, high tech lab in the middle of a Nevada desert to figure out what they're dealing with. The plan (dubbed "Wildfire") goes into effect once a disease-carrying satellite crashes down into small Piedmont, Arizona, killing the entire 68-person population.


This is definitely not a character driven novel. It was almost purely scientifically driven with a few intense human scenes. It moved pretty quickly despite the sometimes dry scientific explanations, but I think it worked because it was on the shorter side. If this had been a brick like The Stand, there's no way anyone would get through the entire thing.


I hated the ending. HATED it. I can't even fathom why Crichton decided to end the book like that. I won't spoil it, but it was definitely a letdown and seemed to come out of nowhere. 


Overall, I'm glad I finally read it but I probably won't be keeping it in my book collection to read again. 

Micro by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston (CBR-IV #1)

Cannonball Read IV: Book #1/52
Published: 2011
Pages: 448 (448 total pages this year)
Genre: Fiction/Thriller


I haven't read any Crichton in a while and I read and loved Richard Preston's The Hot Zone several years ago, so I figured I'd give Crichton's newest posthumous novel a try. 

The premise isn't THAT original (especially to us who grew up during "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" and all 750 sequels), but it still kept my interest. Seven grad students from Massachusetts accept an invitation to visit the mysterious Nanigen Microtechnologies corporation in Hawaii. While there, they find out what Nanigen is really working on-- they figured out how to shrink people and are sending them out on expeditions to discover microscopic species and data that no regular humans could see. 

Things get a little campy with the evil villian CEO of Nanigen, Vin Drake. See? His name even sounds like an evil cartoon villian. Drake shrinks the grad students and turns them out into the wild after he discovers that they might be on to some of his evil doings. Drake just didn't quite seem to fit for some reason. He really was just too cartoonish for a science driven novel. 

Also, I'm a little mixed on the idea that there were seven grad students. Seven main characters are lot of people to keep track of in a novel and these people just fell flat. I'm going to blame Preston here because most Crichton novels have many main characters and I can differentiate between them all years after reading some of the novels. On the good side of having so many characters is wiggle room for some main character deaths. Lots of deaths. I admire an author (or authors) who isn't afraid to kill of their characters. It packs more of a punch when it's someone you know rather than some nameless background character. I just wish some of the characters here had more personality. 

Overall, I really did enjoy this book. It was pretty suspenseful and it managed to keep my interest the entire time, despite it's shortcomings.