I am a Michael Crichton fan, so it wasn't hard to decide to put this
classic on my 2012 reading list. I was first introduced to him the
summer before my junior year in high school. My English teacher for the
next year gave us a reading list for the summer, which included
The Grapes of Wrath, The Crucible, and inexplicibly, Crichton's recently published
Timeline
(I was a junior in 2003, it was released in 1999). Seeing as the rest
of our list was classic novels written during or about American history,
this one seemed a little out of place. But my friends and I read our
books anyway, writing the required 1-page reflection on each one, and
brought them to the first day of class like we were told. When we asked
our teacher later why it had been required reading, she said something
along the lines of "I thought it was a fun book and that you guys would
enjoy a break from the heavier stuff." I have to give her credit, she
was probably the teacher who influenced me the most when it came to
enjoying and analyzing literature. She also introduced us to
The Goonies, for which I am forever grateful.
Anyway, after my first brush with Crichton's work then, I scoured my
mom's bookshelves for his other novels. I loved his techno-thriller
genre mixing and detailed scientific information infused with fiction.
Not literary fiction, by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely a
fun and engaging read.
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