I'd say pretty much everything Crichton wrote was better as a movie in large part because he was writing books rather explicitly intended to be turned into movies.
In addition to being a misogynist he was also hilariously petty. He hated a critic name Michael Crowley so much that in his novel Next he had a character named Mick Crowley, who was a critic, who was a pedophile. Just to be a dick and get back at a critic he hated.
Last of the Mohicans
It was a shitty movie but it was SO MUCH BETTER than the book which was so unspeakably horrible no one should ever have to suffer through it, or really anything by Fenimore Cooper. Dude was one of the most godawful terrible writers ever to disgrace the English language. It's like the Voogon poetry of mid-19th century action adventure novels.
I have the opposite view, I think Waterson got too full of himself and produced a book that's just not very good or interesting.
It's about 100 words long, and in the end it's just another example of the "watch out, learning too much is bad for you!" genre of anti-intellectual, anti-progress, anti-science stuff.
In his book Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny had Yama say this:
"It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy—it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable."
And I vastly prefer that sentiment. Ignorance is not to be cherished or elevated.
I burned $20 on it based on thinking that Waterson might create a cool modern fable for adults. I wish very much I had looked at it in the bookstore first, I could have spent that $20 on something better.
Note that the opening line isn't exactly casual or jovial. The protagonist's name is not Ishmael, he's referencing the Biblical character Ishmael who was the firstborn son of Abraham by his wife's servant Hagar. Later Abram had a son, Isaac by his wife Sarah and Ishmael and his mother Hagar were cast out to make Isaac the only inheritor of Abraham.
After being cast out and wandering the wilderness waiting to die, God saved Ishmael and his mother and "made him a great nation" with 12 sons from an Egyptian wife.
So by opening with "Call me Ishmael" the narrator is giving us a lot of assumptions about himself, that he's been cast aside by his family especially and that he hopes to become great and powerful despite that.
One of my favorite of Twain's rants