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Books Michael Crichton loved as a child
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Michael Crichton
His death is a loss to science fiction lovers and more. He leaves a great legacy, from The Andromeda Strain to State of Fear, in which he postulates global warming is a conspiracy.
My son became a dinosaur expert at age three. Jurassic Park, the movie, came out when he was four. I played it for him, making sure I said over and over, “you know this is not real….” But he wasn’t scared a bit. No nightmares. He loved the premise of “dino-DNA” being retrievable from a mosquito preserved in prehistoric amber. I recall I had to buy him his own piece of amber with a visible mosquito in it! He still has it.
We watched the movie many times, worried with the scientists in Andromeda Strain, and laughed with the crooks in the very different Great Train Robbery.
"Through his books, Michael Crichton served as an inspiration to students of all ages, challenged scientists in many fields, and illuminated the mysteries of the world in a way we could all understand," his family said on his website.
"He leaves behind the greatest gifts of a thirst for knowledge, the desire to understand, and the wisdom to use our minds to better our world."
A parent might wonder how his curiosity and talent emerged – what influences there were. What did he read as a child? Crichton told Barnes & Noble in 2005 that the book that influenced him the most was Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. He said it "was the first novel I read as a young person, that I genuinely enjoyed."
" I subsequently read all the Holmes stories,” he said, “and later in life went back to study them, to see how Conan Doyle had moved his narratives forward so quickly. In fact, his techniques are quite cinematic.”
Then he told the bookseller his ten favorite books and what made them special to him:
1. George Orwell, Collected Essays -- He is my favorite writer, and I read him as a teenager because my father admired him a lot. From Orwell, I got an insight into an independent mind and I emulated him.
2. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi -- Making art out of life, blurring the lines of fiction and nonfiction. And of course funny.
3. Witter Bynner, Tao Te Ching -- This is my preferred translation of this classic, which influenced me very much in my approach to life.
4. Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow -- Actually, I recommend anything by Stevenson. This particular novel must be the source for about 50 movie clichés for any period story. It's great fun.
5. Ken Wilbur, No Boundary -- The first of his books I ever read, and I have read almost all of them. He's brilliant.
6. Alejo Carpentier, The Lost Steps -- I regard this as a man's novel, about manhood. And rare for that.
7. Mary Midgeley, anything by her -- I find her the one of the most interesting contemporary philosophers because she works with real-life issues. And she is especially interesting about science: Evolution as Religion, Beast and Man, Wickedness, and so on.
8. Graham Greene, The End of the Affair -- Again, art into life. A classic in some ways disagreeable and even repellent, but for me mysterious in its impact, and unforgettable.
9. Ram Dass, Be Here Now -- A very important book for me at a troubled time in my life. I wrote about why in a book of my own called Travels.
10. James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks -- a children's book.
Take it from there, parents.
