I grew up a child of the movies, open to watching anything at least once and countlessly rewatching the movies I loved. When not in front of a television, I was instead in front of a book, playing the words of the page out in my imagination. Now I write thrillers of multiple varieties (action, techno, paranormal, etc.), still visualizing words as movies playing out in my mind. Over the years, I’ve seen the quality of novel adaptations grow (e.g., Harry Potter, The Martian, etc.), and yet these staples of my youth have always stuck with me as lost opportunities to deliver a superior work to the general movie-watching audience.
This was the book that got me into reading. It has everything: an intriguing premise, great characters, wondrous, yet terrifying creatures, action, suspense, humor, and a hefty dose of intellect.
These days, most people know Jurassic Park by its film franchise. When the first movie released in 1993, audiences were floored. And don’t get me wrong, it’s objectively a great movie, with wonderful acting and cutting-edge special effects for its time. But at the time? I was disappointed.
I had already read the book more than once and was looking forward to seeing its entire story brought to life on the screen. Unfortunately, the movie only captured about fifty percent of that story (with the rest significantly re-tooled and scattered across its sequels).
If you like the Jurassic Park movie universe, I definitely recommend visiting how it all began!
'Crichton's most compulsive novel' Sunday Telegraph 'Crichton's dinosaurs are genuinely frightening' Chicago Sun-Times 'Breathtaking adventure. . . a book that is as hard to put down as it is to forget' Time Out
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The international bestseller that inspired the Jurassic Park film franchise.
On a remote jungle island, genetic engineers have created a dinosaur game park.
An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now one of mankind's most thrilling fantasies has come true and the first dinosaurs that the Earth has seen in the time of man emerge.
At a whopping 1,152 pages, Stephen King’s The Stand was just too much to capture in a single movie.
That’s why, in 1994, CBS adapted it across four, ninety-minute episodes of a limited run “mini-series” (a fancy way of saying “a really long movie”). In all fairness, it had a great cast and was better than it had any right to be, and was far more enjoyable than CBS’s 2020 attempt at a do-over.
But even with a total six-hour runtime, it couldn’t capture all the story, heart, and nuance that made the book so incredible. It’s a feat to read, one I did to pass the time when bored in school, and one I will surely do again in the future.
Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by virus and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published.
Soon to be a television series.
'THE STAND is a masterpiece' (Guardian). Set in a virus-decimated US, King's thrilling American fantasy epic, is a Classic.
First come the days of the virus. Then come the dreams.
Dark dreams that warn of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the charnel house and Prince of…
On one hand, this sequel to the amazing The Silence of the Lambs might have been doomed from the start, given the pedigree it was expected to live up to. On the other hand, taken as its own work, Hannibal is an interesting, disturbing, and highly engrossing horror thriller.
The ending was extremely controversial, so much so that it was changed for the 2001 movie adaptation. Regardless of how one feels about each ending, however, one thing is certain: the book was the superior version of the tale.
Ridley Scott is an amazing director, but he was the wrong choice for this story, and it led to the overall feel of the movie, as well as the altered ending, not living up to the feel of other entries in the series. Keep an open mind, and the book will please.
_________________________ HANNIBAL LECTER HAS BEEN ON THE RUN FOR SEVEN YEARS.
And seven years after he helped FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling bring down Buffalo Bill, her career is collapsing after a disastrous drug bust.
Meanwhile, seven years after violently escaping from custody, Hannibal Lecter is hunted by Mason Verger, a psychopathic former client obsessed with feeding him to wild boars.
With the one-time partners at a low ebb, Hannibal is the one to reach out to Clarice, who has been plagued by dreams of his rasping voice.
It has been seven years since they both came to realise they…
Okay, bear with me on this one. The Trench is the sequel to Steve Alten’s B-movie-in-a-book Meg, a horror thriller about a prehistoric shark surfacing in modern day.
Both the original book and its sequel have been adapted into movies starring Jason Statham. The first movie accurately captured the B-level quality of the first book. The second movie continued that feel, and while it honestly wasn’t bad, those who haven’t read the book it was partially based upon will be surprised to know just how different the two are.
The Trench, unlike subsequent Meg sequels, deviated from its B-movie nature and delivered a suspenseful, underwater thriller that far surpassed the quality of the first book and their movie counterparts.
NOW A MAJOR HOLLYWOOD MOVIE STARRING JASON STATHAM.
THE MEG MAY BE DEAD. BUT HER SPAWN IS BACK FOR A SECOND BITE...
Four years have passed since the death of the Meg, a giant prehistoric Megalodon shark with a taste for human flesh.
Former Naval Commander Jonas Taylor, survivor of the Meg's wrath, now houses her one surviving offspring at the Tanaka Institute. Deeply in debt, Taylor has turned to an eccentric billionaire to help fund the Institute, but it comes at a heavy price. And this time, it's not just the sharks he has to watch out for.
Soon…
I’m cheating slightly with this one, as Death Note is a twelve-volume manga rather than a singular novel. But the twelve volumes comprise one single, cohesive, top-notch story that I’d pit against any of my favorite, more traditional novels.
Death Note has been adapted into an anime, a Japanese series of movies, and, most recently, a Netflix movie. The anime is excellent. The Japanese movies are also pretty good. But that Netflix movie… compared to the source material, it’s utter garbage.
And unfortunately, because of Netflix’s popularity, it’s the version most people are likely familiar with. And that’s really sad, because I personally feel it damages a brand that has otherwise had great representation in multiple media formats. If the Netflix movie is all you’ve seen, do yourself a favor and pick up the original manga. You won’t regret it!
Light Yagami is an ace student with great prospects - and he's bored out of his mind. But all that changes when he finds the Death Note, a notebook dropped by a rogue Shinigami death god. Any human whose name is written in the notebook dies, and now Light has vowed to use the power of the Death Noteto rid the world of evil. But when criminals begin dropping dead, the authorities send the legendary detective L to track down the killer. With L hot on his heels, will Light lose sight of his noble goal...or his life?
A dying tech entrepreneur. A team of skilled treasure hunters. And a mystical artifact with the power to heal… or to destroy.
Join Gabriel Dunne, clandestine treasure hunter, in a race against time to save his dying friend. With his loyal team by his side, Gabriel must navigate treacherous landscapes, solve perplexing puzzles, and outwit ruthless adversaries on a global quest to find the legendary Pendant of God, a mystical artifact rumored to possess an extraordinary healing ability. But the pendant is also rumored to harbor the potential for devastating destruction. And when it falls into the wrong hands, the fate of the entire world hangs in the balance.
Will Gabriel retrieve the pendant in time to save his friend from certain death? Can he and his team thwart the catastrophe that looms? Brace yourself for a thrilling adventure about friendship, betrayal, and the timeless struggle between good and evil that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the final page!
I have been to, and loved, North, Central, and especially East Africa for over fifty years. Only six times have I been to Africa on holiday; more often, perhaps twenty or more times, as a television producer. Working in Africa gains a perspective of reality that the glories of vacation do not. Each has its place, each its pitfalls like stalled plane rides with emergency landings in the bush or attacks by wildlife. But, in the end, the magic of the “otherness,” what an old friend called “primitava” captures one’s soul and changes your life.
Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd of elephant making their annual migration.
Stumbling onto an elephant poaching, the team become embroiled in true financing of terrorism for al Shabaab –ivory sales–and are determined to stop the slaughter at any cost. Ivory trade financing terrorism involves UN refugee camps with two hundred thousand displaced Somali persons, powerful…
A documentary team hiking through East Africa collides with a gang of deadly poachers, in this gripping adventure by the author of Kidnapped on Safari.
Years of filming, extreme dangers, and daring rescues have taken their toll on documentary producer Pero Baltazar and his team. To relax and reconnect with the East African wildlife they love, Pero organizes a walking safari for him, his camerawoman Nancy Breiton, and their elite guide Mbuno Waliangulu. Still, Pero has trouble truly disconnecting from work. When the team comes across a herd of elephants making their annual migration north of Lake Rudolf, Pero decides…
