you should try the 'baroque cycle' :

The Baroque Cycle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

yeah, there is some fluff. but there is a lot of meat: early natural philosophy, metaphysics, economics, etc.

crichton lost me as a reader with 'congo'. terrible.

i think i read timeline, but i can't remember it specifically. jurassic park was ok, as was the remake of beowulf.

Two books that I really enjoyed from Joseph Boyden.
Through Black Spruce and Three Day Road.
I believe they are the first two of a trilogy. The third isn't in print yet.
Maybe we need a recommend a book thread.

Crichton was a fine writer. I've enjoyed most of his stuff. Never read Congo though.

Wow - who let in the prick?

You make a few valid points but I fail to see the connection between our glutinous ways and a benign form of entertainment such as the musings of a smart man having fun with a few ideas?

Reading Joyce or Shakespear or listening to Bach won't make you less of a consumer or promote a better social awareness. Fine leadership and a moral compass does that.

The beauty of fine American Literature is that it's for everybody. Joyce's unnecessary complication, Shakespeare's ancient language - interesting as they are - don't speak to our country or our history. America is open and rather straightforward.

The fact that just about any reader can pick up Mark Twain or Scott Fitzgerald and join in our national story is not a drawback but an asset. It's why Americans don't generally feel a slight or hate a foreign people for more than a generation. We are moving forward rather than chained back to some distant past. It brings problems and causes mistakes, sure. But it beats the alternative.

I very much enjoy Crichton. others I always buy as soon as they come out are books by 'Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child'. not sure what genre you'd call them but very entertaining.

For me, books are like conversations with people. I enjoy all types from the simple most low-brow to the very intellectually stimulating.

Then again, I'm the person that talks to people on plane's and subways! :D

angela