About this title: With extremely well-preserved bits of DNA from dinosaurs, a scientist plans to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs. When the island that houses the theme park suffers a power outage, the dinosaurs run rampant, and the humans must run for their lives. This novel was the basis for the 1993 film of the same name.
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780394588162ISBN:0394588169
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 416 p. Contains: Illustrations. Ex-Library expected imperfections. read more
"Excellent. Much better than I expected; much more suspenseful and thrilling than the movie. I don't often watch the movie before I read the book, and perhaps that's why I'm more happy after experiencing both this way(the other way around usually leaves me dissatisfied).
At any rate, the movie followed the book closely enough that while reading I waited for certain scenes to crop up - sometimes they happened the way I expected, at other times they didn't. The latter made for some very intriguing and unexpected twists in the plot.
The forays into genetic engineering, biology, computer systems, and chaos theory, far from detracting from the overall experience, only added to the suspenseful plot. Speaking of which, the scenes where prehistoric animal confronts man, and man most often loses, both horrified and thrilled. Descriptions on a page, I find, sometimes evoke more horror and shivers than even moving pictures. Ian Fleming did it, and so did Crichton.
Overlaid on top of that is some fine characterization. Grant is a superb hero; Hammond a convincing misguided, egomaniacal villain. Tim really shines in the novel as well, far more than in the movie where his sister is older.
The only quibble I have is with the ending. What?! There's hardly final resolution there... but maybe that's why Crichton finished it the way he did. I suppose I'll have to read the sequel now."
"What I love most about Michael Crichton is that many of his books have a basis in science and Jurassic Park is no different. Dealing with cloning and genetics, I read this years ago and it all seemed possible to bring dinosaurs back from extinction.
The first time I read this book was long ago in the fourth grade. It just captured my imagination (to be honest, I was just starting to get out of the obsessed-with-dinosaurs-phase) and I couldn't put it down. My mom was glad that I was reading more adult stuff, whereas my fourth grade teacher said I didn't understand the science and therefore I couldn't do a book report on it.
However, thinking about now, Michael Crichton would probably be one of those writers today like Dan Brown that I try to avoid reading. On the other hand, I will always have a soft spot for him and his books because I read all of them when I was younger in middle school. So to be fair, my rating of 5 stars is what I would give Jurassic Park out of nostalgic reasons. If I read it again today with the mindset I have today, it would probably be very different."
"An island off Costa Rica will soon be the world's most ambitious theme park--a dinosaur preserve. A visionary financier's biotechnology company has succeeded in cloning these extinct reptiles. Fifteen different species, presumably incapable of breeding, are now placidly roaming around, but Jurassic Park's resident mathematician, an expert in chaos theory, predicts that the animals' behavior is inherently unstable. When a rival genetics firm attempts to steal frozen dinosaur embryos, things go haywire. Two cute American kids, eight-year-old Tina and 11-year-old Tim, a safari guide from Kenya and a Denver paleontologist set things aright--almost. Though the dinosaurs here are more interesting than the people, Crichton ingeniously interweaves details of genetic engineering, computer wizardry and current scientific controversy over dinosaurs to fashion a scary, creepy, mesmerizing techno-thriller with teeth. It can be read as a thought-provoking fable about technological hubris and the hazards of bioengineering."
"I'm really surprised by how much I enjoyed this book! I have seen the movie several times, and always enjoy it...and now I appreciate it even more, because it makes things left vague in the movie make so much more sense.
The added character development (and even dinosaur development, for that matter) make the book fly above and beyond anything a movie could ever recreate."
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