Books

I probably wouldn't recommend The Andromeda Strain as your first Crichton. Although it's among his earlier books, it can be pretty dry at times, so you really have to be a fan of the science part of the sci-fi.

Something like Micro, Prey, or Next would probably be better places to start - those are among his later works (in fact he passed while writing Micro), and they have pretty good plots which move along at a fun pace. Sphere gets an honorable mention here too.

If you like any of those and you're willing to try something a bit more on the sciencey side, check out Jurassic Park.