works of wanderlust

There is never a bad excuse to read, but hunkered in the cool basement to avoid the hot weather nursing a cold Coke and speed running some fanciful fiction is better than many. 

I won’t tell you that there is either rhyme or reason to my recent picks besides that I’m on a bit of a first in, first out ebooks from the digital discount bin on the Kobo site or whatever pops up on my library holds list first. For example, I assume the original Jurassic Park book was on sale for a buck ninety nine a couple weeks ago because there is a new (eighth!?) movie in the franchise due in theatres imminently. The same reason that I bought a new Jurassic World game on Steam for less than a cup of coffee this past weekend. I’m just riding the shockwave of the cultural vibe, it seems. And I’m okay with that, too.

These last couple weeks I’ve read:

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

I’d be lying if I said my first read of this book—way back in the early nineties—did not influence my choice of post-secondary education. I remember that our high school librarian who knew that our little group of nerd kids were ravenous readers showed up at the side of the table where we were playing cards one lunch and held out a copy of the book with its stark white and black dinosaur bones cover to the group and asked who wanted to be the first to read it. I accepted. The novel and subsequent movie sparked a kind of renaissance in the popularization of genetic engineering akin to a 90s version of the AI goldrush of 2025: everyone wanted a piece and every piece of media—magazines, television, and more—were telling kids that biology was the career of the future. A year or so later, having devoured the novel and the concept, I was enrolled in a science degree program and the rest is a sad trombone of personal history. I can’t recall having read the book since high school, but Jurassic Park is one of those things like Star Wars—there’s been so many sequels and video games and theme park rides transect my life that, first, it was hard to recall if the novel had been one of those and, second, the source material was almost underwhelming with respect to both the official and head canon that has emerged and swirled through the decades in between. The novel is a romp. And by far lighter and less dense than I remembered, like a Grisham novel with science-ish concepts. And that’s fine. Though reflecting on the direction this book sent my life spinning felt a bit like I’d been chased along the way by a Tyrannosaurus Rex to only find out later it was little more than film prop.

Vacationland by John Hodgman

Over a decade ago we went on a vacation cruise in the Caribbean. The Kid was young. We were young, too, but kind of in that middle demographic of not young enough to be cool but not old enough to be completely out of touch. I had been listening to a podcast by John Hodgman (about a week before we left for Florida departure) in which he was talking about suspiciously similar cruise he was about to embark as well. Sherlock I am not, but I nonetheless figured out that the cruise itinerary on which we were coincidentally booked was simultaneously hosting the JoCo Cruise, a fan convention at sea for which at least half or more of the passengers were attending. We were not attending. We were like vacationers who show up for a quiet vacation in middle of comiccon. We spent our weekend spotting C-list celebrities from our deck chairs and watching convention-goers enjoying a completely different week than the few hundred rest of us were having on a much more typical vacation. Yet, (tho I knew he was aboard) I had not spotted Mr. Hodgman. Was he actually on this boat? Was he hiding from Wil Wheaton? Had he tumbled overboard, martini in hand, and been lost at sea? The second-last night of the cruise the convention was hosting a big party on the Lido deck but, as they were setting up, us normies were still allowed up there and so the fam and I went for a soak in the hot tub before we got evicted to the buffet. It was then, sitting there in a whirlpool in my swim trunks, drinking a cocktail when I happened to look up. There standing on the deck at parade rest in bare feet and a tuxedo was the guy himself. Just standing there. Sound-checking or vibing or just being him weird self. Core memory. My Kid, aged six, did not care at all. But if you enjoy rambling anecdotal vacation stories like this, stories that touch on odd confluences of priviledge and ecclectic knowledge, Mr. Hodgman’s book may be right up your alley.

I’m Starting to Worry About this Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin

My familiarity with the writings of Mr Pargin extends back to a fondness for the various essays and comedic observations he infrequently published pre-pandemic, and that twist through my complex relationship with the publication Cracked.  When a new article or guest podcast appearance bylined with his name on it I could always tell I would need to pay slighty more rigorous attention to the plot and his wry, pulse-on-the-zeitgeist observations which so parelleled a lot of familiar vibes I couldn’t always articulate on my own. There is, of course, always a danger in looking to a single source of understanding of anything, particularly in this vastly connected reality we share, but I will admit I felt a kind of abstract, quasi-celebrity kinship to this guy with whom I shared a kind of parallel upbringing and creative motiviation. That said, his resulted in a more successful (rightfully earned) outcome, and all of this background is relevant to the tone and substance of this latest of his novels, a standalone adventure-ish story that could easily be subtitled ”Or, why people on the internet are all nuts, you shouldn’t trust a word you read, and first thing’s first: take a deep breath and calm the fuck down!” Pargin has an acute sense of the moment in which we all live, and I suspect this is largely because he has spent enough mental processing cycles pondering the outrage engines and content factories to be a successful participant in the same if for no other or better reason than to promote his writing. That can’t help but leave a few scars on the soul of any author that surface in clever or disturbing ways through a thrillride of a novel that was hard to put down once I started reading.