Wow what an ending. Crichton managed to keep it tense to the very last moment sucking every bit of tension and unease he could manage. Overall great book, really slow in the beginning though but it picks up fast on the last half of the book and explores some interesting ideas surrounding the revival of extinct animals as well as human behavior. I enjoyed the little tidbits of information regarding the dinos in the book such as if they had complete skeletons and other things regarding the skeleton and how it can’t show you the full picture.

Dino Death Counter: 5!

We end the book off with a grand total of 5 deaths not bad! probably more though considering the sickness from the dinos and also kinda funny that all the characters just leave and don’t do anything about the dead dinos washing up on the shore and getting people sick.

I knew trying to fix the baby trex’s broken leg was not a good idea, be cause it is not soon after that the parents show up. At first the Trex’s seem fine and they get their baby back but then they go ballistic and start pushing the trailer that Malcom and Sarah were in towards a cliff(Just like the movie!). This whole section was really tense it wasn’t clear if everybody was going to make it off the trailer before it tumbled off the cliff, not to mention the raptors slowly approaching the high hide thing that Levine and the kids are in. Well after everyone’s alright the raptors of course start attacking the high hide and start climbing up managing to pull Eddie off and eat him. Arby froze up in fear and fell off the side but he’s alright he managed to lock himself in the dinosaur cage(like a shark tank but for dinosaurs). Then the Raptors start kicking the cage toward their nest meaning a bunch of overgrown raptors are playing soccer with a cage with a kid inside. Of course everyone gives chase to try and get Arby back.

What a crazy section I can’t wait to see how the book concludes in the next section and it’s also great to see the dino death counter finally get some love as well. Overall not really to many important ideas in this section. There was some stuff about the complexity of life and all that and how dangerous and mysterious nature is all that stuff but didn’t seem like there was anymore ideas of corporate greed or anything, I mean Dodgson is still alive in a shed somewhere so I am not exactly sure how that plot point will be worked off. I think it would be really funny if he got stuck on the island and has to live with a bunch of dinos, but he’s probably going to die in the next section anyways.

Dino Death Counter: 4!!

Alright! more deaths in consecutive sections amazing!

This section sure has been an eventful one that is for sure. I don’t know where to begin. Perhaps with Dodgson and crew with their magic sound box that scares off dinosaurs. In the original Jurassic Park, Dodgson is that one shady guy that Dennis Nedry makes a deal with to get the dino embryos. That didn’t work so now he is going to nesting sights to get dino eggs cause he can. Well it works well for the first one then they Dodgson gets cocky and thinks it’s a good idea to try to steal some T.Rex eggs, which obviously does not work well and one of em gets chomped up. Malcom’s gang investigates and finds an injured baby trex which Eddie decides to bring back and another fella from Dodgson’s crew dies from Velociraptors. The main things pushed forward this section was human stupidity and greed seen from Dodgson’s foolin around(still alive by the way) and also some ideas of not messing with nature or it will rip your arms off. Honestly pretty fun section I enjoyed reading it, some more people finally died from dinos and more plot points were set up for future bad things to come.

Dino Death Counter: 3!

Woohoo finally some more bloodshed!

Lots of stuff in this section, Dodgson and crew arrived and is probably going to dumb really dumb things, Sarah got to the island, almost getting killed by Dodgson on the way there, and Levine is completely absorbed in his work and everything else really just seems trivial to him. Crichton seems to use character dialogue in the book to explain theories and explanations to smoothly integrate elaboration into certain scenes that may confuse the reader. By using the dialogue it sorta clears the air and gives the reader a better idea of significant stuff that occurs including dinosaur behavior, evolution, and human behavior. I feel like some the listed concepts will be even further elaborated on in the coming sections along with some more dino deaths hopefully(crossing my fingers here).

Dino Death Counter: 1

Again hoping I can add some more numbers to that tally!

What a fantastic section, we get some more lore into the OG Jurassic Park, most particularly on the dinosaur creation process and other such things. Also there were a few hints to what seems to big a bigger problem, it seems to be a mysterious virus that is making it’s way to the main land through washed up dino bodies. On top of that we get to see our first actually living dinos, most notably the rexes. overall pretty good with a few good tense moments. Some main ideas in this section are the issues with commercializing dinos, and that things such as reviving extinct species should have more proper planning(which should be apparently obvious but would most likely happen anyways cause when has this kind of thing every properly worked the first try, it’s just human nature to make really easily avoidable mistakes but whatev’s).

Dino death count: 1

sadly no new additions to the counter since Diego, well I mean I could considering the virus could have killed some people but I don’t want to try and guesstimate all that, far too much work if you ask me.

This second part really begins to build the tension and continues to give more background to characters while also putting big plot points into motion. Such as the bad guy scientists spying on the main group and finding out where the dinosaurs and the lost scientist are. I also have a suspicion that the kids sneaked into the vehicles they brought to the island.

The story continues with the big ideas of medical and genetic companies fueling a war for biological tools for medicine and such and are using scientist as their weapons to pillage and raid nature for something new to make the best new drug.

I have really enjoyed the book even more than last time after getting the intro out of the way it got even more interesting!

oh and one more thing

THE DINO DEATH COUNTER: 1

I had to revise from last time, because as it turns out one of those first two didn’t die(the missing scientist) so unfortunately that is one tally of the death counter.

So far the books been pretty interesting and has a set a lot of ground work for what is to come (introducing characters, creating tension, giving motivation you know generally setting the scene). There’s also been a lot of nerdy paleontologist things casually referenced in the book that always leaves pretty confused, but other than that the book has some pretty interesting concepts surrounding ethics in science.

This first section was nothing to write home about, but overall pretty good pacing and didn’t leave me very bored.

Additionally there were two deaths by dinosaurs already so that’s two to the dino death counter.

Dino Death Counter: 2

I am reading Jurassic Park: The Lost World, with Gus. I have been interested in the Jurassic Park books for some time now and I figured this project would be a good opportunity to start reading them. I am excited to start this project. It seems a lot simpler than the other projects we’ve had this year. Although it is worth mentioning that Lost World is the sequel to Jurassic Park, meaning that I am reading them out of order. That shouldn’t be a problem though since you could view the movie as a slightly inaccurate summary of the first book. Even without reading the first book I should still have a great time reading this book without missing much of the references to the first book. With that said I hope to enjoy this book in the following months and I am glad to be able to share my thoughts with the class.

I am reading the book House of Leaves by Mark Z. Dainelewski. I have already been reading House of Leaves for a while at this point and I can say that I have really enjoyed reading it, in fact I have never read anything like it. House of Leaves has unique way of story telling not seen in other books. Dainelewski makes use of fonts, text color, format, and even the footnotes to give voice to different characters or story elements. It should be mentioned that House of Leaves is not an easy book to read or understand. The story often branches out in nonsensical ways that only become important later. I look forward to unraveling this complex tale.