First things first: I don't think I will ever be able to spell "Crichton" without help, as it is a nonsense spelling and pronunciation that completely evades my memory.
I somehow missed out on Jurassic Park when I was young, and when I say "somehow" I mean "I'm very easily spooked and Jurassic Park (in book and movie form) was way too scary for me, and then I just kinda forgot about it". I didn't pay it any attention until a couple of years ago at grad school, when, while settling on a group project idea for Multimedia Literacy, a pal of mine said, "let's focus on Jurassic Park" and my fate was sealed. Cue the Year(s) of the Dino, where I devoured the movies and the book and a Rollercoaster-Tycoon-esque game called Jurassic World Evolution which is as great as it sounds, but then stalled out on The Lost World and didn't pick it up again until my nieces challenged me to a summer reading contest this year (a contest I intend to WIN).
So I finally read The Lost World and yes, it's bananas, and yes, I loved it. There are characters who are evil for no reason and meet a suitably grisly end! There's a douche who no one likes but who they work with who does very typical white rich guy stuff who gets shown up by other people! There are children who are, for some reason, geniuses! And most of all, best of all, there is Dinosaur Drama APLENTY. When I watched Jurassic World my main takeaways were that a) it's not good!, and b) the main reasons it's not good are joylessness and a lack of wonder for the natural world! The Lost World (both book AND film even though they are very different from one another) retains the fun and joy and wonder (and genuine scares!) that make Jurassic Park so damn good.
One thing Crichton seems to love doing is carrying a story smoothly along and then taking BREAKS FOR SCIENCE!!!!!!!! We open on our main characters, squirreled safely (?) away in the high hide, observing the Noble Apatosaurus turn on a Vicious Velociraptor in order to defend the herd with its mighty tail!! Now is a good time to discuss the complexities of the idea of natural selection AT LENGTH! It's ridiculous and I love it. Every other scene has Ian Malcolm declaring that "complexity/chaos theory can perfectly explain this!" and/or having a character put forth inexplicable knowledge on a subject FAR away from their field (slight spoiler but WHY would a mathematician know about prion risk in sheep???).
Will reading The Lost World change your life? Probably not! Does that take away from its fun in any way? It doesn't!
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