For me, *Jurassic Park.* It’s a phenomenal adventure story. It’s also a thoughtful take on the inherent danger in the power of science and engineering.
The book isn’t airtight. Crichton has “raptors” able to hit cheetah speeds and chew their way through steel bars – that’s a stretch! And there are a couple other issues that will jump out at you if you’re science-literate. But on the whole, it’s still awesome.
by Mayo_Kupo
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Most books I’ve read…
Catherine Ryan Howard references this book in The Trap and The Nothing Man (if I’m not mistaken)! I have a feeling I should read it soon
I’m also a big JP fan! I try not to take anything too seriously; it’s science *fiction*, after all.
I used to like Jurassic Park. I still do. But I used to too.
I considered Neuromancer to be like my bible after I first read it. I carried that book everywhere and memorized chapters, pages, and the terms of it all. There was nothing really like it that I had read before.
I feel like on my most recent re-read, there are parts that I still love. Especially the whole analog feel to the technology that only someone in the early 80s could imagine, but I felt more annoyed with the book. The prose in this book is a double edged sword. It’s beautifully thick to get lost in. It drips atmosphere and world building that went on to establish the “cyberpunk” sub genre. When it comes to moving the plot or setting a theme, it becomes a sludge that hinders it. It’s the hardest book to recommend to people because I want them to fall in love with these characters and world, but I’m also afraid they’re going to hand it back and say, “What the hell am I reading?”
JP was one of my fave books as a kid
Watership Down was my favorite book when I was 9 and it is my favorite book now.
All books I’ve completed…
A lot of critchton books are like that, they are extremely enjoyable and moments like the raptors chewing through steel bars don’t usually prevent me from suspending my disbelief, it’s more like a fridge logic kind of thing.
I will always love Harry Potter. I read the series as a kid/teenager and then reread it as an adult and loved it just as much 💗
This is a serious question and allow me to apologize in advance if it’s a dumb one. How different is the JP book from the movie?
I used to love another Michael Crichton story: The Andromeda Strain. I would fixate on the CDC sterilization procedures when I was a little kid reading with a flashlight. Now that I’m an adult (and I’ve since seen the movie! which I liked a lot) I still find it compelling.
Peter Pan – timeless classic to be read for generations. Whimsically nostalgic. This is the most obvious one for me, because I loved it when I was younger, and most people are familiar with the story, but so many haven’t actually read the piece.
The Trial – Franz Kafka
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
I reread all of these books multiple times, and I’m not one to reread books. The Trial, especially, I always get something different out of it than the previous time.
And a couple other books that I read within the past couple years that I plan to reread in the future because of how much they affected me: The Song of Achilles, Cloud Cuckoo Land.
There were also books that I absolutely adored as a child (fantasy) that I’m sure I would love today. Eragon is an example.
Anne of Green Gables Series
Tamora Pierce’s Protector of the Small quartet and most of her other Tortall books.
I related to the protagonist hard as a teenager, and her books are what really got me into reading. It was probably the first time I ever truly saw myself in a character, and I loved Kel and her friends.
I haven’t read them in years, because I feel like I’ve out grown them, but I still like them and they’ll always be special to me, and I’m better for having read them.
“Far From the Madding Crowd” by Thomas Hardy and the Sookie Stackhouse series tbh
Inheritance series. Loved it when I was younger, reread it recently and still loved it.
Kinsey reports.He did unethical things to get his research. Compared to the lies that Frederich Wertham was dealing at the same time that eventually fucked up society and social culture, he was a trailblazer in sexuality pre-Masters and Johnson.
Watership Down
A River Runs Through It is a beautiful little book
The Lost World was great too
Problematic author aside, Ender’s Game holds up really well into adulthood.
Every so often I reread Dracula & it never lets me down. Bram Stoker defined the genre for a reason
Great sci-fi but genetics IRL != vehicles with keys left inside.
Discworld and The Hitchhiker’s Trilogy were the books I loved as a teen that have stayed with me the most.
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Catcher in the Rye.
I remember reading it in my angsty teen years, and it made so much sense. The conflict Caulfield experienced, the yearning, the sort of confused desperation, all the difficulty he had relating that he couldn’t make heads or tails of.
It just clicked.
I’ve waded into it a few times recently, and it seems I don’t particularly relate to it all that much anymore. It does kind of come off as a whining kid.
But I know that first reading was valid, and I get that people could see so much of themselves in Holden, even if I don’t. As far as I’m concerned, the books nigh a monument of western civilization.
Murder on the Orient Express. Probably my favorite Christie of all time.
The one book I’ve read so often over more than fifteen years that it fell apart was Stephen King’s “The Drawing of the Three.” The one that precedes it in the series is pretty good, but the one after just fell flat, a trend that in my opinion continued to the point of sheer boredom and unreadability before the conclusion five books later. But the second book, the one I write about here, is one of the finest bits of story I’ve read in English yet. I always recommend it.