“In the summer of 1993 the best movie ever made had been released, and eleven-year-old me had gone to the cinema to see it with [my brother] nine-year-old John. CGI Dino Mania had gripped the world and Cork was no exception – the queue for tickets was all the way down the street and around the corner. I had laboriously read as much of the book as I could, and everything that summer seemed to have the black, red and yellow Jurassic Park logo on it (I had the binder, pencil case and notebook). In special issues of Smash Hits magazine, I had read all about Mr. Spielberg’s dinosaurs and how they had been created, and I was glued to any behind the scenes documentaries shown on TV. As I got older I was finally able to understand the bits of the novel thick with genetics and chaos theory, and I progressed to more age-appropriate merchandise, like a special-edition DVD and John Williams’ original score.”
- from Mousetrapped: A Year and A Bit in Orlando, Florida
No constant reader can really chose a favorite book of all time, as there would be far too many up for the title, and too many different kinds of books for the process to be fair. However if I had to name the book that has given me the most reading pleasure in my lifetime, I wouldn’t even have to think about it: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.
Jurassic Park's original cover, before any movie studio marketing department got its velociraptor claws into it.
I first read Jurassic Park in July of 1993. In those days my family spent as much summer time as we could in a little touring caravan (berth: 4, family members: 5) that we kept near the beach at Garryvoe, Co. Cork. I’d have been bored to tears there without books, and I can clearly remember lying in the bunk above the dining table (yes, the bunk above the dining table), laboriously moving through Jurassic Park‘s pages. I had only turned 11 and was, understandably, in awe of dinosaurs but confused by chaos theory. It’d be another while before I could read it all but once I did, I did so regularly. I’ve read it at least once a year since then, and still have my original paperback copy, although now it’s all Sellotape and crease. And yet every time it entertains me, even when I know what’s coming – even when, in places, I know the sentence that’s coming, and I know it off by rote. While backpacking in Central America in 2008, a highlight of the trip was landing on a beach in Costa Rica: one of the early scenes in JP occurs in such a place, and Crichton had described it perfectly. The JP Jungle River Ride in Universal Studios may have almost killed me, but – I think – it was worth the risk. (That one time. I won’t be doing it ever, ever again.) (more…)
