Re-Read Ramblings

I have a bad tendency to pull old favorites off the shelf and re-read them over and over.  Books, that is.  I sort of have a standing list of favorites that always close by.  I don't limit it to fiction, but include non-fiction as well.  All sorts of stuff, like...

Donna Tartt's The Secret History
Count Harry Kessler's Berlin in Lights
Tim Marigold's Cold Warrior
Piers Brendon's The Dark Valley
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion
Gerard Derozoi's History of the Surrealist Movement
Etc., etc.

This evening, I went a bit out of the box, down the route of the cheap technothriller, and pulled out Crichton's Jurassic Park.  Maybe it's in keeping with the times, as they're now trying to milk that cash cow by re-releasing the movie in 3-D.

I'm not sure about that whole deal (ie, the movie re-release).  Granted, I loved the film when it came out.  I was still in grad school, and had read the novel not long after it came.  The movie was fun, enjoyable popcorn fare, but it was really the four-color comics version of the book.  I hate to say "dumbed down", but... 

I'm not really sure how I'd take to it, all these years later.  Granted, I've seen it a few times since (used to own a VHS copy of it, but that's long gone).  The digital eye-candy was wonderful, and Steven Spielberg is (in films like this) always capable of delivering on the "wonder" factor, but...

The book, however, is still quite good.  It's Crichton at his shrill best. going down the route of "worst-case-scenario", and backing it up with the latest trendy theory name dropping.  Hey, anything with the word's "chaos theory" in it anywhere was damned cool!

I'd read The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man back in high school, and had been creeped out by them both.  Much later, I hit Jurassic Park, and was sort of hooked.  I devoured The Lost World, Rising Sun, and even went back and read  Congo.  I pretty much became a Crichton fan for a while.  (Hey, I even found a copy of Travels...)

Then I made the mistake of reading Sphere, and that pretty much ended it.  (I don't want to stop anyone from reading it, but...  The phrase "poorly plotted,written and constructed first draft of a REALLY bad movie pitch" pretty much covers it.)  None of the books written after Rising Sun ever did for me.

Really, I don't think this entry is going anywhere, beyond my pulling an old book off the shelf, cursorily flipping through the pages, and ending up reading half the book in a quick sitting.  Brought back some memories, not unlike pulling out Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg.

Ah, memories...  And a good read on the side...