Despite the fact that overall I really don't care much for any kind of horror/scary stuff, Halloween is always a holiday I look forward to. Generally, it's because I like the creative elements of jack-o-lanterns, dressing up, and seeing what other people dress up as. Plus, October is my favorite month with leaves changing and the weather cooling down. Halloween gets to ride on the reflected glory of the rest of the month. Not to mention piggybacking off the joy of harvest with visits to pumpkin patches, farms, orchards, etc. Yet, even though I focus on the non-scary elements, there is something to be said for a bit of spooky atmosphere. I enjoy listening to my Halloween playlist, reading spooky books like Frankenstein, and watching some spooky/suspenseful movies or TV.
This year, I've been reading more scary books than usual to help me complete the reading challenge from Pioneer Book. I'm sure I'll talk more about that in January. In addition to a few murder mysteries and other chilling classics, this year I decided to read Jurassic Park, which I've never read before. It was strange delving back into dinosaurs in our day. Dinosaurs have always been the nightmarish monsters of my imagination.
They say that all kids are instinctively fascinated by dinosaurs. In may case, the fascination was more of terror than anything else. I remember going to a museum when I was 6 or 7 where they had at least one whole gallery of animatronic dinosaurs complete with eerie dinosaur sounds. My brother certainly loved it, but they were totally petrifying to me. It didn't matter if they were carnivorous or herbivorous, they were all scary in my mind, and I didn't want to get anywhere near them. I think that part of what heightened the horror for me was the mechanical jerking motions they made. It gave them an unnatural air of unpredictability, though of course their motion was entirely programmed. I remember how relieved I was when we finally left the dinosaur display area for other parts of the museum. Of course, I was entirely dismayed by the thought that I had to pass one more of those sickening creatures in the main hall on the way out!
So much for my general fear of dinosaurs from an early age, I think it may be well to rehash some of my history with Jurassic Park specifically. My first exposure to it was watching the movie when I was 9. We saw it in the theater, which was weird because we hardly ever went to the theater in my family. I figure my parents must have decided to spring for it since it was known to be pretty revolutionary as far as visual effects. While there were a few scenes I enjoyed, like seeing all the beautiful herbivorous dinosaurs in the fields, I really didn't like the movie as a whole. It was way too scary for me. The T-rex attack was terrifying and the raptors were horrific to me. Of all the scary dinosaur attacks, however, I think it was the dilophosaurus attack on Dennis that felt most frightful. The idea of being blinded before being eaten was ghastly. Of course, Dennis suffers the worst fate because he is ostensibly the villain of the whole affair. As a note, the death of Dennis is also the most unsettling, gory part of the book.
As much as I disliked watching the movie, it's aftermath was way worse than the initial experience. I've always had an overactive imagination, and was way too good at creating a plethora of dinosaurs ready to pounce. In our apartment at the time, the room I shared with Marinda faced directly down towards a hallway that led to Gerrit and my parents rooms as well as the bathroom. At night, this hallway was very dark, and I was sure there were velociraptors lurking unseen waiting to get me despite the fact that I knew rationally that this was impossible. And this terrifying fantasy didn't just last a week or a month, but off and on for the rest of the time we lived there, which was for another 2 years or so. After we moved, the phantasms became less frequent and eventually petered out.
I've since learned to enjoy watching Jurassic Park periodically for it's entertaining premise and wonderful visual effects, though I admit that it has occasionally stirred up for a few days phantoms from childhood for me. In fact, after reading the book this year, I was very tempted to pick up a used copy of the movie, but decided it wasn't a good use of money in the end.
That brings things up to date, so I'll dive into how I came to read the book. The book challenge I'm doing has all these required categories that need to be completed in order to get the reward. One of the categories was "employee pick," meaning that the book needed to be recommended by one of Pioneer Book's employees. I don't get down to the store very often since it's not especially nearby, so I was relying on the store's social media feeds that I follow to give me options. Though I've been looking all year, there were only a handful of things posted there to fit this category, and nothing seemed like something I wanted to read, so in desperation I started reading through some of the comments to see what others were doing. One of those commenting mentioned that she was reading Jurassic Park to fit the employee pick category. I latched on to that as the one option that held interest to me and decided to read it in October in honor of it's scary associations.
Most of the books I've read for the challenge have taken me at least a few weeks to get through because I'm a slow reader, but I got through Jurassic Park in less than a week simply because I spent a few days reading it a lot. It really was quite a page-turner! I'd heard that the movie was pretty significantly different than the book, but though I'd heard a few spoilers on that score, I was still quite surprised along the way. Many of the characters have entirely different fates in the book versus the movie, so all the way through I was left in suspense to see how it would turn out. The book also has some weird elements to it, like the t-rex's seeming fixation on chasing down humans. In reality, I don't think a rex would be all that interested in us when there was an abundance of larger prey like all the herbivorous dinosaurs around, but of course that is not very dramatic! I did like how the book went into some of the technical oversights that lead to the problems more than the movie did. Obviously, some of that material is kind of dated, but it still holds up reasonably well from a logical standpoint.
So much for some of my impressions from the book. Now for its effects. I've said that I have an overactive imagination, and while it is somewhat tempered with age, it's no less vivid now than it was in childhood. I admit, for the week I was reading the book a lot as well as the week or so after while it was still on my mind, I was still apprehensive about facing the darkness of the house at night. Of course, I was much better about rationally goading myself out of inaction due to phantasms, but I couldn't banish them entirely! I suppose that there are some childhood impressions that never leave us fully.
Other results of reading the book were that I created three distinct dinosaur-themed study packets for kids at my work. That was pretty justifiable, however, since I've had a sad lack of dinos thus far and kids have asked me for things about them before, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I also found a great interest in visiting several of the excellent dinosaur quarries here in the area. I found myself doing the research on one that I've past a couple of times as well as a few others that I've seen many years ago like Dinosaur National Monument. It's not really the ideal time of year for dino-tourism in some ways, but hopefully I can convince some unsuspecting friends or family to join me for a trip to one or more of them come Spring. For now, I will suffice myself with a visit to the Thanksgiving Point dinosaur museum, which I have free tickets for that need to be used, and maybe the BYU one or something. We'll see how far I actually get.
Though I got through my monster book much earlier in October than I originally intended, it was fun having a new spooky piece to enjoy on top of my almost perennial October monster read Frankenstein. The main advantage I have now versus when I was a kid is that now I am able to lick my imagination much faster. I suppose it has it virtues as well as these drawbacks, however, so I'm glad that it can't be entirely banished!
As much as I disliked watching the movie, it's aftermath was way worse than the initial experience. I've always had an overactive imagination, and was way too good at creating a plethora of dinosaurs ready to pounce. In our apartment at the time, the room I shared with Marinda faced directly down towards a hallway that led to Gerrit and my parents rooms as well as the bathroom. At night, this hallway was very dark, and I was sure there were velociraptors lurking unseen waiting to get me despite the fact that I knew rationally that this was impossible. And this terrifying fantasy didn't just last a week or a month, but off and on for the rest of the time we lived there, which was for another 2 years or so. After we moved, the phantasms became less frequent and eventually petered out.
I've since learned to enjoy watching Jurassic Park periodically for it's entertaining premise and wonderful visual effects, though I admit that it has occasionally stirred up for a few days phantoms from childhood for me. In fact, after reading the book this year, I was very tempted to pick up a used copy of the movie, but decided it wasn't a good use of money in the end.
That brings things up to date, so I'll dive into how I came to read the book. The book challenge I'm doing has all these required categories that need to be completed in order to get the reward. One of the categories was "employee pick," meaning that the book needed to be recommended by one of Pioneer Book's employees. I don't get down to the store very often since it's not especially nearby, so I was relying on the store's social media feeds that I follow to give me options. Though I've been looking all year, there were only a handful of things posted there to fit this category, and nothing seemed like something I wanted to read, so in desperation I started reading through some of the comments to see what others were doing. One of those commenting mentioned that she was reading Jurassic Park to fit the employee pick category. I latched on to that as the one option that held interest to me and decided to read it in October in honor of it's scary associations.
Most of the books I've read for the challenge have taken me at least a few weeks to get through because I'm a slow reader, but I got through Jurassic Park in less than a week simply because I spent a few days reading it a lot. It really was quite a page-turner! I'd heard that the movie was pretty significantly different than the book, but though I'd heard a few spoilers on that score, I was still quite surprised along the way. Many of the characters have entirely different fates in the book versus the movie, so all the way through I was left in suspense to see how it would turn out. The book also has some weird elements to it, like the t-rex's seeming fixation on chasing down humans. In reality, I don't think a rex would be all that interested in us when there was an abundance of larger prey like all the herbivorous dinosaurs around, but of course that is not very dramatic! I did like how the book went into some of the technical oversights that lead to the problems more than the movie did. Obviously, some of that material is kind of dated, but it still holds up reasonably well from a logical standpoint.
So much for some of my impressions from the book. Now for its effects. I've said that I have an overactive imagination, and while it is somewhat tempered with age, it's no less vivid now than it was in childhood. I admit, for the week I was reading the book a lot as well as the week or so after while it was still on my mind, I was still apprehensive about facing the darkness of the house at night. Of course, I was much better about rationally goading myself out of inaction due to phantasms, but I couldn't banish them entirely! I suppose that there are some childhood impressions that never leave us fully.
Other results of reading the book were that I created three distinct dinosaur-themed study packets for kids at my work. That was pretty justifiable, however, since I've had a sad lack of dinos thus far and kids have asked me for things about them before, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I also found a great interest in visiting several of the excellent dinosaur quarries here in the area. I found myself doing the research on one that I've past a couple of times as well as a few others that I've seen many years ago like Dinosaur National Monument. It's not really the ideal time of year for dino-tourism in some ways, but hopefully I can convince some unsuspecting friends or family to join me for a trip to one or more of them come Spring. For now, I will suffice myself with a visit to the Thanksgiving Point dinosaur museum, which I have free tickets for that need to be used, and maybe the BYU one or something. We'll see how far I actually get.
Though I got through my monster book much earlier in October than I originally intended, it was fun having a new spooky piece to enjoy on top of my almost perennial October monster read Frankenstein. The main advantage I have now versus when I was a kid is that now I am able to lick my imagination much faster. I suppose it has it virtues as well as these drawbacks, however, so I'm glad that it can't be entirely banished!
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