Monday, May 7, 2018

Michael Crichton's TRAVELS, A Book Review (1988)

Michael Crichton's TRAVELS Book ReviewI have just returned from a trip around the world. A few of the more exotic countries that I visited were Thailand, Maylaysia, Bonaire, Ireland, England, Tanzania, Jamaica, New Guinea and Pakistan. On these travels, I climbed mountains, swam in the seas and slept with fleas. I mingled with elephants, felt the breath of gorillas on my face and swam among the sharks. I travelled off the beaten path and in some very rough conditions.

This trip was another armchair travels trip that I took via Michael Crichton's nonfiction book, Travels. It was a book club book that I recommended to the group. Fortunately, most of the group enjoyed the book more than I did.

I did enjoy parts of the book though I expected something different than I received from within the pages of the covers. It turned out that the title Travels was a little more general than I took it to be. It was meant to encompass Crichton's life adventures, which included literal travel but also spiritual adventures and medical training.

eNotes.com called Travels a "patchwork of pieces salvaged from a writer’s bottom drawer" and that is certainly how I felt about the book and why I was not keen on it. It does a good job of sharing Crichton's experiences individually but I would have appreciated it more if it had flowed as a single story rather than a series of short stories. In terms of writings, I suppose one might consider it a journal or diary of sorts.

On Crichton's website, it says that the book started as a series of travel pieces though he never intended to write about his travels thinking of them as just "something he did for himself that wasn’t work-related and wasn’t supposed to amount to anything." I understand how an author would not always want to chronicle everything in his life. Anyway, when Crichton discovered that some of his most important experiences happened on his trips this book was born and, when the book became autobiographical, he added the medical stories.

I am sure you have heard of Michael Crichton. He was a very successful novelist, screenwriter and film director. It is interesting that he wrote and sold books while he was studying to become a medical doctor though perhaps odd that he made it through the entire training program before he decided he did not actually want to be a doctor. In his 66 years, he wrote eleven books and more than 200 million copies of them have been sold in the science fiction, thriller and medical genres. In 1994, he had an unbelievable trifecta that included a number one movie, a book and a television show. Namely, Jurassic Park, Disclosure and ER. I am sure you will have heard of a couple of those, too.

Do I recommend Travels?

I guess so, reservedly. I would not recommend this book to someone looking for a page turner or an engaging novel. This book is as I have said before, a group of stories.

If you like to travel, you might enjoy the unusual destinations in this book whether or not you would choose them yourself. If you do not travel, you might enjoy visiting these places via the pages of a book.

Whether or not you believe in psychic phenomenons like aura reading, spoon bending, out-of-body trips and exorcism, you might enjoy learning about them and the various experiences Crichton had in the metaphysical world.

If you are interested in the human body or in being a medical doctor, you might appreciate the first chapters more than I did. If you red the book, you will discover how medical students are assigned cadavers and what follows.

But do not let my lukewarm recommendation be the deciding factor about whether or not you read this book for I have read many reviews by people who really enjoyed it and the majority of my book club members found Crichton's adventures interesting.

Reviewer Patricia Bosworth said in a 1988 New York Times book review, "I was ultimately swept away (by this book), not just by Crichton's richly informed mind, but his driving curiosity. Satisfying your curiosity takes guts."

Shangri-La anyone? The Shangri-La Michael Crichton visited is not the one you might have in your mind's eye. I thought of Shangri-La as an earthly paradise of sorts. Apparently the version I was picturing comes from a 1933 book called Lost Horizon. The real Shangri-La, as experienced in Travels, is quite different from that pleasant image in my mind and a good example of the unusual destinations in this book.

You can learn more about Michael Crichton's Travels on Amazon by clicking right here. If you do read the book, be sure to come back and let us know what you think of it. You might also let us know what your perception of Shangri-La was before you read this post.

See you
at the book store!
Brenda

Quick Links:

Buy Travels from amazon.
More armchair travel book reviews.
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7 comments:

  1. Brenda, you have my curiosity peaked. I love Crichton's other books and can imagine that the expectations were different than the realized book, but it does sound interesting. Putting it on my "to read" in the future list. Hopefully I'll get to it this summer.

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  2. Thank you for a very fair and comprehensive view of Travels. I have enjoyed a couple of Michael Crichton's other books, but I'm not much for science fiction, medical details about student adventures with cadavers, or psychic phenomena. The book I remember reading years ago was The Andromeda Strain. I do like reading books of short stories more than I used to because I don't have long periods of time to read anymore, so if the subject matter were a bit different I might want to give this a try.

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  3. Glad to know you didn't literally sleep with fleas, swim with sharks or smell the bad breath of a gorilla up close and personally! Since I am not a huge fan of memoirs and journals, I would guess that Travels would not be a book for me. However, my husband is a Michael Crichton fan so he would probably enjoy the in-depth, real stories of the mans life and travels.

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  4. So pleased to have your review of 'Travels', Brenda, as it is not what I expected it to be from the title. I thought it was to be more of a travelogue of places the author has experienced, with facts about the places and his recommendations of things to do and see. I didn't realize it was more of a memoir and that it veers away from the main topic of Travel. He should have promoted it more as an autobiography, perhaps.

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  5. Thank you for this review. Until I retire (or get an easier job) I'll need to stick with page-turners or topics that really keep my interest. I'm a slow reader as it is because I'm so tired. But... this sounds like something I'd like to read if I had more energy. Or maybe if I were on an extended vacation.

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  6. Sounds like a book Crichton fans would enjoy with the memoir woven throughout.

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