4.5 stars! reading vlog: https://youtu.be/ufNlUwbhmJM

was so surprised by how much I enjoyed this! thought it built the suspense SO well and had so many twists and turns I could not put it down!!

4.5 stars

This is an all time fave. Nothing can ever compete with my love for dinosaurs.
My obsession for Jurassic Park sometimes rules my life and I don’t freaking mind.

Have a taste of my favorite moment in the movie

Jurassic Park: a novel (Jurassic Park #1), Michael Crichton

Jurassic Park is a 1990 science fiction novel written by Michael Crichton, divided into seven sections (iterations). A cautionary tale about genetic engineering, it presents the collapse of an amusement park showcasing genetically recreated dinosaurs to illustrate the mathematical concept of chaos theory and its real world implications. A sequel titled The Lost World, also written by Crichton, was published in 1995.

In 1989, a series of strange animal attacks occur in Costa Rica and on the nearby fictional island of Isla Nublar, the story's main setting, one of which is a worker severely injured on a construction project on Isla Nublar, whose employers refuse to disclose any information about.

One of the species is eventually identified as a Procompsognathus (a dinosaur that lived approximately 210 million years ago).

Paleontologist (scientific study of life that existed prior) Alan Grant and his paleobotanist graduate student, Ellie Sattler, are contacted to confirm the identification, but are abruptly whisked away by billionaire John Hammond — founder and chief executive officer of International Genetic Technologies, or InGen — for a weekend visit to a "biological preserve" he has established on Isla Nublar. ...

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه آوریل سال 1996میلادی

عنوان: پارک ژوراسیک؛ نویسنده: مایکل کرایتون؛ مترجم: ناصر بلیغ؛ تهران، نقطه، 1372، در 520ص، مصور، جدول؛ موضوع: افسانه های علمی از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

عنوان: پارک ژوراسیک؛ نویسنده: مایکل کرایتون؛ مترجم: محمدرضا طباطبائی؛ تهران، عارف، 1372، در518ص، چاپ دیگر تهران، یاد عارف، سال1381، در518ص؛ شابک 9647667000؛

عنوان: پارک ژوراسیک؛ نویسنده: مایکل کرایتون؛ مترجم: سعید مهاجر؛ مجید مهاجر؛ بی جا، سعید مهاجر، 1372، در407ص، مصور، جدول، نمودار؛ چاپ دوم 1373؛

عنوان: پارک ژوراسیک؛ نویسنده: مایکل کرایتون؛ مترجم: شهناز انوشیروانی؛ تهران، محیط، 1373، در541ص، چاپ دوم 1376؛ شابک9646264044؛

عنوان: پارک ژوراسیک؛ نویسنده: مایکل کرایتون؛ مترجم: ناصر بلیغ؛ تهران، نقطه، 1375، در520ص، شابک9645548470؛

دیگران نیز این کتاب را ترجمه کرده اند؛ جناب علی ای‍ث‍اری‌‌ک‍س‍م‍ای‍ی‌؛ و خانم ن‍س‍ی‍م‌ آری‍ان‌؛ از آنجمله هستند

پارک ژوراسیک، رمانی نوشته ی «مایکل کرایکتون»؛ پزشک، و نویسنده ی «آمریکایی»، به سال 1990میلادی است؛ در سال1993میلادی، «استیون اسپیلبرگ»، فیلمی بر اساس همین کتاب ساختند؛ داستان در رابطه با یک جزیره است، که دانشمندی از خون یک پشه، که دی.ان.ای دایناسوری در آن است تعدادی دایناسور را، در جزیره، به وجود آورده، او تصمیم به راه اندازی پارکی، برای دیدن دایناسورها میکند؛ پس از ورود یک تیم از دانشمندان رشته های گوناگون، کنترل از دست کامپیوترها خارج شده، و دایناسورها ....؛ و ادامه داستان؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 29/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 20/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Well, I'm at that slightly awkward moment when I rate a film more than the book, and that's no exception for 'Jurassic Park.' I am a huge fan of the film, and I've just contemplated my age as I was below the age of 1o when that film was released. (Scary stuff.) This was the kind of film that I found slightly unsettling as a child, but I still continued to rewatch it on a regular basis.

I have no excuse as to why I hadn't read this book any earlier, other than I was distracted with other literature, or maybe I was concerned that if I disliked it, that would dampen my love for the film. Either way, I still enjoy the film, but this book was just mediocre.

Firstly, the research that has been put into this book is amazing. All the scientific references mainly flew over my head, but I liked that they were included in the book. Also, I'd like to show my appreciation for my gorgeous book cover on this edition. It's just beautiful!

Returning to the scientific references, these I appreciated, but I do think they were placed sporadically at times, which in turn impacted moments where one should have been on the edge of the seat, like a dinosaur attack, for instance. Instead, mid attack, Critchton decides to give us a biology lowdown. Couldn't he wait until afterwards? It kind of ruined the ambience, and this is where the film was better.

Critchtons prose was one I didn't grow to love. It was almost in note form, and it lacked the depth I usually crave. It was very matter-of-fact and without feeling which is something I struggled to appreciate. Maybe I was seeking too much, I'm not sure.

Another issue I encountered is the lack of character development or depth. It was nonexistent, and it was mildly frustrating. I felt like Crichton didn't tell us enough about these characters that were all embarking on a crazy adventure with dinosaurs and I felt pretty cold towards most of them. Also, I noticed that during some particular characters encounters with dinosaurs, like the velociraptors in the kitchen, the characters seemed at a loss at the situation they happen to be in. A complete lack of assertiveness.

Due to all of these issues rolling into one big hairball I have failed to rate this book any higher, and despite my disappointment, I don't feel terrible about it. Will I read the sequel? Maybe in twenty years.

Jurassic Park, the movie, came out when I was in third grade. I was the very definition of its target demographic: 8 years old, obsessed with dinosaurs. I'd already spent hours of my childhood drawing up maps of dinosaur zoos and now Steven Spielberg was putting my playtime fantasies on the big screen?? I was pumped. I went and saw it over summer vacation with my dad, who had to walk out of the theater when Samuel L. Jackson's severed arm dropped onto Dr. Sattler's shoulder. (Dad never did well with blood - and yet he took my mom to see Jaws on one of their early dates in an effort to impress her. Girls jump at scary movies and cling to their dates, went his logic. He had to walk out of that one too, family lore has it...)

So anyway, I watched that movie over and over again, and when I found out it was based on a book - well, I grabbed a copy and read it ASAP. I was in fifth grade at that point, and so it was more than a bit beyond me. But who cares about all the technical jargon and boring exposition? I just skimmed right on to the good parts, with the dinosaurs chasing and mauling and doing their dino thing.

Why revisit it today? Well, because my own little son is fully vested in his dinosaur phase and our house is festooned with tiny plastic figurines, which he can gleefully name. Kid can't quite pronounce "hamburger" but he sure can nail "Pachycephalosaurus!" All the dinosaur books we're reading, though, feature polite and good-natured dinosaurs learning lessons about manners and sharing. I was feeling nostalgic for stories of the flesh-ripping, human-stalking, fearsome beast variety again. So back to the cream of the crop I went!

As per his reputation, Crichton does very well in this genre of sci-fi techno-thriller. There is a lot of expository info dumping but he judiciously intersperses it with action scenes. There's enough technical gobbledygook to give a veneer of realism but not enough to dampen the excitement. The movie certainly pared the plot down to just the essentials which is actually a feature, not a bug—it means that reading the book is a very different experience than watching the film.

4 stars out of 5. A gem of vacation reading.

I was a little hesitant to read this book because I have such an immense love and appreciation for the movies. But I'm glad to say that I think I may have enjoyed the book MORE than the movies! Which is really saying something because Jurassic Park is one of my all time fave movies!

The only thing that stopped it from being five stars is that I found the beginning a bit slow to start. There was a lot of explanation and set up and I found it a tad boring if I'm being honest. But I can see how it was necessary to the story and it quickly picked up!

Crichton paints a very vivid picture of all the craziness going on, the writing is incredibly descriptive! I think that's probably why the movie was so great, they had such a GREAT story to base themselves on! And I think that even if I hadn't seen the movie and loved it so much, I still could have pictured the story in my head like a movie because the writing is just that phenomenal!

I particularly enjoyed the bits of graphs and what not that were featured because despite not being able to understand some of them, I thought they added a really interesting element to the story! And Crichton did do a good job of trying to explain them, I just have so little knowledge of scientific stuff that I was a little lost sometimes!

“Discovery is always rape of the natural world. Always.”

I have been watching the Jurassic Park movies since I was a child. I have watched and rewatched every single one so many times and have no idea why it has taken me so long to read the book the franchise was based upon. Jurassic Park is the first in Crichton's dinosaur duology but elements from the first three movies have their genesis inside this book.

This begun in quiet a different vein to the film, featuring a multitude of small scenes where individuals have unwittingly come into contact with small dinosaurs. Although completely different, it reminds of Stephen King's The Stand. The reader already knows what is occurring, more so for a modern-day readership, yet the author draws out the full reveal, filling the pages with glimpses of different characters and their stories instead. I love this suspenseful style of story-telling.

It took almost a full-quarter of the book before different specialists in the fields of mathematics, engineering, and paleontology, as well as Hammond, the creator of the new wave of dinosaurs, grandchildren, made it to the island and begun their tour of the proposed new dinosaur park set there. A long focus was spent behind-the-scenes, learning how they created these pre-historic creatures and how they presume to control them, all of which were fascinating and lent this an authentic feel due to the dense scientific backing. The thrills this book imparted came later but were no less suspenseful and entertaining than its large screen counterparts.

This book is interesting to discuss, from a moral standpoint. I can't view the creator, Hammond, as a bad guy. He used his wealth to recreate his passion. The scientific advancements were also incredible. But how ethical were they? To speed up animal growth, patent the DNA, and make them deficient in certain areas so they will rely on the island for their existence seem like security measures but these are living, breathing animals who have been messed with inside of a lab. This retained queries over the moral dilemmas the characters encountered throughout. I'm still not 100% sure the park was an incorrect creation, for the immense scientific advancements, but it certainly added another intriguing layer to the already thrilling story.

Not only was there a multitude of scenes featuring the suspenseful creep through knee-high shrubbery as the characters sought to evade both dinosaurs big and small, as well as full-blown panic-stricken sprints for evasion, but this was filled with a plethora of queries and concerns electrical, scientific, and ethical in nature that kept me engaged, enthralled, and enamoured throughout.

Rereading for obvious reasons. :D :D :D :D

One of the rare times the movie is better

I love, love, love the amount of research put into the science. As a bio nerd, I love that it built off possibilities and expanded into something intense and thrilling.

But the characters were a little one-dimensional? Like they just existed to push the plot forward? And maybe it’s just because the movie handles tension SO well... this didn’t seem to? (You don’t have to stop and explain the science WHILE the Raptors are attacking, mkay?)

——————-
It’s possible I procrastinated reading this for my monthly bookclub and need to binge-read it before the wine-mom’s judge me

When I watched the movie Jurassic Park the first time around, it left quite an impression on me. I was a teenager when it was released and those raptors had me so paranoid that I was extremely jumpy when I came home that night. CRAZY bastards!!!

Years later, when I realized that the movie was actually based on a book, I had to check it out. And although it’s true that “the books are always better”, the movie was pretty amazing, even though it didn’t stay true to the book. But it makes the book almost more interesting, because it’s the original story, the way the author envisioned it.

And as always the book has so much more details. Much more backstory. And the science and chaos theory were explained in depth. Also I really loved the graphics of the computer displays. Especially when they started counting the animals.

This book really doesn’t get old, especially not for someone who loves the movie franchise, loves to read books with an edge to it, and honestly when have dinosaurs ever been boring. Especially when they start killing off people one at a time ;D.

The nice thing about the book is that it isn’t as graphic as the movie. The shock effect isn’t as drastic, and I can easily read the book and sleep without dreaming of dinosaurs.

I’m pretty sure, I’ll be reading it again in 10 years or so.

n  n    “you know what’s wrong with scientific power?” malcolm said. “it’s a form of inherited wealth. and you know what assholes congenitally rich people are. it never fails.”n  n

jurassic park is one of those books that i read ages ago, and any memory of it was then almost completely overwritten by the 1993 movie. and carol’s review pretty much says it all: turns out i actually also prefer the movie to the book, even after this recent reread.

though the book does the science part very well, it kind of lacks individual character arcs and depth that the movie added -- and which made the story feel a lot more alive in my opinion, hence my preference. and that is even without the visual bias regarding the friggin’ dinosaurs.

anyway, let’s get into the synopsis for the .01% of you who have no idea what this story is about.

john hammond, an eccentric rich guy, funds a genetic laboratory and buys an island off the coast of costa rica to work on something no one has ever attempted. five years later, when his investors start worrying about the return of their investment and the safety of the ‘resort’ hammond is constructing, he invites a number of experts to his island to inspect goings-on and deduct whether what he’s doing is truly safe.

those experts include two paleontologists: alan grant, who specializes in juvenile dinosaurs and dino nests, and ellie sattler, who specializes in fossilized plant life. there’s also ian malcolm, a mathematician whose main schtick is chaos theory, and donald gennaro, a lawyer from the firm that helped hammond get enough funding to enable his shenanigans.

what follows is what marketing fondly likes to label a ‘techno thriller’ as our main cast soon discovers that the resort is actually a habitat for living and breathing DINOSAURS, and no, it’s not actually safe at all.

who would’ve thought??

first of all: the book does a much better job at including all the little details which make the existence of a jurassic park infinitely more believable. and that’s not just the science i’m talking about here -- it’s also how john hammond ever managed to raise capital and escape governmental scrutiny while prepping his resort.

it’s one of those things that i usually admire about crichton’s work: the level of immersion he’s able to create. he tends to play around with things that could already be theoretically possible in the not-so-distant future, and plants them in our contemporary world in a believable way.

of course, he sometimes gets a bit hamfisted about what kind of messages he wants to put forth about capitalism, consumerism, and the exploitation of science and the environment, but you can very easily imagine all his characters having strong opinions on these topics because… well, they matter, and they’re very relevant in our current society as well.

but yes, no worries: the science is good, too.

i was surprised to see the lab’s main geneticist, henry wu, take a much bigger role in the book than he ever had in the movie. he spends a lot of time explaining how dinosaur dna is extracted from amber and what kind of changes he’s made to ensure that the grown dinosaurs can’t really become a problem. plus, he helps out a lot when shit goes down.

and you know what else was good about the science?



that’s right, baby. rockstar mathematician ian malcolm.

i’m happy to report that he’s got even MORE savage takedowns and chaos theory monologues in the book than he has in the movie. at times, he does come across as very much being a mouthpiece for Certain Opinions, but i didn’t mind that much because he’s ian malcolm. duh.

he does illustrate a problem that i had with the book that i already mentioned at the start of this review: the lack of character depth and/or arcs. i might not have even noticed this as much if i’d never seen the movie but alas, i have, and a couple of really smart decisions were made there to give the characters just the tiniest bit of growth or cleverness that made them more relatable.

alan grant gets to learn how to relate and care for kids, ellie sattler gets to call out sexism rather than having her legs stared at constantly, and tim and lex get to prove their smarts and ability.

in the book, they’re all pretty static and only really The Expert in a certain area; they don’t move much beyond that. i also found it weirdly hilarious that despite the book having some genuinely creepy thriller scenes (yes, the velociraptors in the kitchen scene is very good), most of the characters seem almost… nonplussed by what’s happening at times?

like, these people are getting bitten left and right, thrown around, fall out of trees, get chased on river rafts and in janky jeeps by DINOSAURS, spend 8+ hours without food, get caught in hurricanes, are DYING, and everyone’s just like --

n  “hmm, it’s a pity the main power is down. someone should go fix it. aw shucks, first guy who went to check might be dead.”

“hey, anyone see alan and the kids? oh what the heck, they’re probably still alive.”

“oh damn, that raptor is pretty close to biting through that one steel bar keeping him away from us. hey, did someone ask me about chaos theory?”

“distracting a bunch of highly dangerous dinosaurs? no big deal! oh and hey they might be onto us and also attacking from a different direction, could you check? ‘kay, thanks!”

“so many people have died, someone really needs medical attention and a heli, but let’s just split up to look for dino nests without getting better backup or weapons first, and oh hey lemme just take a stroll over here and casually break my dumbass ankle!”n

i was getting some serious Extremely Tired Holiday Rush Retailer Employee vibes from the characters’ reactions, while i personally would’ve been losing my shit if i’d ever been in one of these situations, never mind having ALL of them thrown at me.

combine that with the flat characters, and it just made me less invested in the story overall. the only ones who seemed genuinely upset at times were the kids, and even that was often cartoonish (see also: lex’s incessant screaming).

one thing the book did very right, though, was painting john hammond as an absolute scumbag. in the movie, he’s kind of a loveable goof who just wants To Do Cute Things For Kids and makes a couple of really dumb decisions in the process (such as not paying his IT employees enough). whereas in the book the man is absolutely salivating over selling jurassic park tickets for 10k to rich families and making the Most Money in the World Ever.

in the movie, gerrano (the lawyer) kind of takes this role, but having hammond as the No-Scrupules-Scrooge-McScrooge comes across as more believable AND it provides better commentary on capitalism because the guy with the ‘vision’ and the means is doing it mostly to be exploitative (and he’s an ass to his employees, too).

anyway, i could’ve made this review a lot shorter by just saying this: read the book for the cool science. watch the movie for the cool everything else.

because the special effects are still holding up even after nearly 30 years, and the cast is pretty swoon worthy too.



✎ 3.5 stars.

Like most people my age, I've watched the movie Jurassic Park a million times. I love that movie...the first one that is. The second movie is fine, the third movie is horrible and the Jurassic World movies are watchable. But Jurassic Park is a masterpiece. Is it scientifically accurate? No. But it doesn't need to be.

So how does the book compare to the movie?

I still enjoy the movie more but the book is great. Its different in some ways but it's the same in other ways. The movie lifted several scenes from the book but the feel of those scenes are different. The movie is a family action adventure film. It's fun. The book is at times a horror novel. I was genuinely on the edge of my seat while reading this book.

So what are some differences between the movie and book?

- There's a lot more violence in the book.
- The ages of the kids are flipped Tim is the older sibling in the book and Lexie is younger(and super irritating)
- Nobody dies on the toilet in the book
-Dr. Grant likes the kids in the book
- Some people who died in the book, live in the movie
- Theres no romance
-Hammond is truly awful in the book and not the lovable naive billionaire from the movie

Overall I think you can enjoy the book while still loving the movie. I don't think one is better than the other from an artistic perspective. My nostalgia for the movie will always give it the edge.