If you've seen the movie, don't bother with the book. The movie cuts out tons of cruft and replaces boring monologues with memorable one-liners.

Malcom is the prime example here. The book spends paragraphs and paragraphs letting him monologue about the most pretentious faux-philosophical crap, which might be fine if the book also wasn't so serious about it. Malcom is written straight, not as comic relief or a foil to Hammond's evil businessman. Instead he seems to serve as the author's stand-in, so he can very bluntly tell the reader about the dangers of science and technology and other philosophical musings. Replacing *that* with Jeff Goldblum was a genius move.

The move to a visual medium works really well because you don't have to *imagine* the dinosaurs. The book barely describes the dinos; if I'd not seen other depictions of them, I'd honestly have no idea what they looked like.

But the biggest improvement the movie makes is to age Lex up. Reading any section with the children is a slog; Lex is just awful. I don't think Michael Crichton has ever interacted with a child before. She is the most idiotic, annoying child, and I think she might actually be a sociopath.

This book is just a mess; it starts strong but well overstays its welcome. The bones of a good story are in there, it's just hard to see them through all the posturing and bad prose. No characters experience any growth. Do yourself a favor and enjoy the movie.