@Leptok: He's a little bit dead for that. They did recently release some full manuscript they found on his estate as a book - something to do with pirates. I read it but I've forgotten the title. It was a forgettable book, too, and I wasn't surprised he didn't put it out while he was alive.
IRT Sphere was my favorite Michael Crichton book, probably followed by Timeline.
" I love the Spielberg movies that came from his books. But I don't really know what the books are like. "
As with any other adapted screenplay, the books differ in some ways. I guess the books are more "technical", Crichton puts a lot of details into his writing and puts in all these tables, graphs, faux news articles in some of his books. He does have a skill pf making the reader stick with the book. Many times I'd read one of his books and lose track of the time.
Sphere is definitly my favorite but Jurassic Park (the first one of course...) is very close. I actually found the book better than the movie (which was still very good).
The Lost World wasn't terrible. It has this nice map of Site B in it, and it's a pretty easy read. A lot more accessible than the original Jurassic Park.
@ShaolinSpade: Next and State of Fear, Crichton's last two books (aside from Pirate Latitudes) are two of his worst and unlike his other novels are written with a political agenda. State of Fear I read, it was about how Michael Crichton didn't believe in global warming and it was about some ecoterrorists faking huge natural disasters to prove it was true. er, that is to say, the book was fiction, but Michael Crichton made his beliefs clear through it. Next, I discovered, was more of the same, so I didn't read it, but I believe it was about genetic engineering and in a similar vein.
Jurassic Park for nostalgic value but I'd say my favorite aside from that is either Eaters of the Dead or Andromeda Strain. I've read all of his fiction titles aside from Airframes and Disclosure and enjoyed all of them. Timeline is underrated and Pirate Latitudes gets a lot of shit but it was a manuscript found in his home that no one ever read but him. It was probably years away from being released and was actually pretty good for being incomplete. A rather nice throwback to some of his older pre-JP works.
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