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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A thoroughly captivating and engaging experience, 6 Dec 1998
By A Customer
"If you're a writer, the assimilation of important experiences almost obliges you to write about them. Writing is how you make the experience your own, how you explore what it means to you, how you come to possess it and ultimately release it." So states Michael Crichton in the preface to this brilliant and captivating book. Known the world over as a hugely intelligent and entertaining writer of imaginative fiction, he brings all his talents to bear as he sets out to describe his own extraordinary travel adventures. Whilst seeking to explore what these experiences mean to him, he invites us to share his thoughts and feelings and some very personal insights too. Early chapters describe medical school and the beginnings of his career as a writer and film director, and anyone with even the most perfunctory knowledge of his work will recognise much of the background to it here. Despite achieving considerable success however, he finds his values beginning to change and in an effort to fend off depression he hits the road. At this point the book really takes off as he launches into a series of chapters covering trips made all over the world over a period of 15 years. Michael Crichton does not always emerge as an attractive or sympathetic character. However, through his willingness to expose his limitations and vulnerabilities, he is revealed as a fallible and human person who seeks to grow and learn whatever he can from life. Highlights for me included a wonderful description of ascending Kilimanjaro, and the internal dialogue which sustained him during it, and two conference retreats in the mojave desert, where he experiences some weird and wonderful revelations whilst in a state of heightened awareness. As someone who also felt a compulsive desire to travel, only to realise much later this was actually the reflection of an inner journey, I could really relate to this book. I would say it is one of the finest I have read, without a doubt his best. Whilst his fiction can be an intellectual treat, this book is a much more emotional and involving experience. I found it highly enjoyable and influential, hugely resonant and powerful, thought provoking and helpful, and have returned to it many times. Not everyone will enjoy it, but to those of thoughtful and inquiring mind in search of some of life's answers, I cannot recommend it highly enough. We can but hope that one day he will write, if not perhaps a sequel, then more in similar vein sharing the sort of insights which make this book so enlightening and rewarding.
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by Michael Crichton
by Michael Crichton
by Michael Crichton
by Michael Crichton
by Michael Crichton
