Kriston made me laugh out loud with his Michael Crichton post.

I would only add a passage from a Martin Amis review of The Lost World, collected in The War Against Cliche, p. 222:

When you open The Lost World you enter a strange terrain of one-page chapters, one-sentence paragraphs and one-word sentences. You will gaze through the thick canopy of authorial padding. It's a jungle out there, and jungles are 'hot' sometimes 'very hot'. 'Malcolm wiped his forehead. "It's hot up here."' Levine agrees: '"Yes, it's hot."' Thirty pages later it's still hot. '"Jeez, it's hot up here, " Eddie said.' And Levine agrees again: '"Yes," Levine said, shrugging.' Out there, beyond the foliage, you see herds of cliches, roaming free. You will listen in 'stunned silence' to an 'unearthly cry' or a 'deafening roar'. Raptors are 'rapacious'. Reptiles are 'reptilian'. Pain is 'searing'.