The Lost World (the novel) gets flack for not being a good novel. Gotta say I disagree. I thought it was great, and it pisses me off that Spielberg hounded Crichton to write a sequel when Chrichton was dubious about it since he didn't want to be seen as a "cash-grabber", only to when Crichton did get around to starting a first draft and told Spielberg about it, he sheepishly told Crichton he'd already hired David Koepp (co-wrote the Jurassic Park screenplay with Crichton) to go ahead and write a sequel anyway. That's why there's about 3% of the novel in The Lost World, and the other 97% is original material. And bad original material, I might add. I mean, what was the point of pigeonholing Crichton into doing something he didn't want to do, only to stab him in the back in the end?
Well, money, of course. But still, missed opportunity to make a great sequel to a great movie based on an incredible novel. Lost World wasn't all that great, Jurassic Park III was as cookie-cutter as you could get. Jurassic World was at least a decent step in the right direction.
Anyway, Crichton just posthomously released a novel called Dragon Teeth, which is about digging for dinosaur bones in the 1800s. I'm anxiously awaiting for Amazon to send it to me.