favorite books: The Lost World

from Goodreads

I have to confess: I love dinosaurs. Love them. They absolutely fascinate me. It's The Land Before Time that did it to me. And The Land of the Lost. And ... Dinosaurs (just kidding). And years later, Jurassic Park.

I have also read (twice) Jurassic Park and the sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park by Michael Chrichton. These are both great books for dinosaur and adventure lovers, but Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World is my very favorite dinosaur adventure book.

I had never read Doyle before, and I was surprised by his witty, fun writing style. This book is 103 years old, and yet still so entertaining! I started reading Sherlock Holmes after this because I enjoyed it so much.

The concept of a lost world is that, as the earth changed, a particular area did not because it was so completely separated from the rest of the world, either as an island or a plateau or a valley of some kind. In this book, it is a plateau, with sheer cliffs that can't be climbed. Professor Challenger learns of its existence by a chance encounter with a dying man who had drawn a stegosaurus in his diary. Challenger follows directions from Amazonians to an area considered to be cursed. He uses drawings in the diary as landmarks and finds the lost world. However, he meets with disaster and barely escapes with his life, much less any proof of the lost world. No one believes him.

Malone, a reporter and the narrator of the book, proposes to the woman he loves, and she turns him down. She says that she wants to marry someone who has done something Very Brave. To win her affection, he gets the crazy idea to convince Challenger to organize an expedition to this lost world.

And so the adventure begins.