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Summary: brilliant, funny, intriguing
Review: this book combines beautiful, streamlined writing with a wonderful and original story, and one that has enough odd turns to keep it funny and surprising. i'm not an orchid lover, just a lover of good writing and good reading. this did it for me.
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Summary: For Orchid Historians Only
Review: One of the members of my book club chose this book mainly because she loves true stories. We were all sorely disappointed in this book. We found it to be slow and boring and was a chore to get through. The only people who could enjoy this book would be orchid historians or the orchid "philes" described in the book.
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Summary: This book is an orchid too ...
Review: I love this book. Since reading it a year ago, I occasionally dip in to it again for a taste of the exotic, interesting and endearing. Susan Orlean writes with a journalistic voice similar to Joseph Mitchell's (also a writer/journalist with "The New Yorker"); however, on its own merits, this book is very vivid in its prose; quirky, poetic and profound in it's disclosures about orchids, human history, and the various characters she encountered. She has a knack for off-the-wall and creatively descriptive prose, and I admire her talent. I felt sad when her book ended, but at least I can bring it out periodically for a taste of literary truffle.
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Summary: A very long journal article
Review: This novel contained too much excessive detail and facts pertaining not only to orchids, the obssession with orchids, but also pertaining to the swamp and characters within. When Susan Orlean left her journalistic viewpoint and just wrote about Laroche and others and their obsession with orchids the story became interesting and at times quite funny.
Rating: 
Summary: a great read
Review: I'd only recently discovered the great orchid flowers when I read this book. It's beautifully written with a fantastic sense of humour and offers a bizarre and fascinating insight into some truly impressive eccentric minds. You don't need tons of horticultural expertise to enjoy this book , but by the same token, if you are a plantophile, you won't find it too 'dumbed down'. I laughed out loud numerous times reading it, but it's not all humour - it's also a gentle and open-minded foray into a world alien to the author...at the outset, at least. I'd recommend this book highly.
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Summary: A fascinating look at obsession.
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I have never had the slightest interest in orchids. It actually reminded me a lot of Tony Horwitz's Pulitzer-Prize-winning "Confederates in the Attic." Just replace the male journalist with a female journalist, and trade out Civil War fanatics with orchid fanatics. Both books offer fascinating glimpses into lives of people who fully entrench themselves into their interests interwoven with solid research.
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Summary: Review of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief
Review: Ahhh... the sweet sight and smell of flowers. Flowers have the ability to say what we wish we could say. Roses: love, daisies: peace, and lilies: sorrow. And if there were a flower that could speak volumes about obsession, greed, envy: the orchid. For Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, her interest in is sparked when she reads about a Florida native and three Seminole Indians caught smuggling orchids from a state preserve. The author's perspective early on is that of an outsider looking in. She knows as much about orchids as most people know about cold fusion. She's just an ordinary person writing to ordinary readers about an extraordinary passion. When Orlean first heard about the accused orchid-smuggler /collector/ horticultural consultant, John Laroche, she thought of him as "an extremist, a madman with a passion for orchids that was far removed from the average way that people feel about plants, about anything." This chain smoking, self proclaimed genius whose "tallness, thinness, and paleness seemed always to be growing taller, thinner, and paler" becomes her guide and mentor. With help from Laroche, Orlean's mission to see and experience the mystery of a wild orchid takes her to the most inhospitable areas of Florida. Here's a writer from The New York Times, trekking through harsh mosquito, alligator, and snake infested swamps-- risking her life just see what it is that makes orchid collectors go to extremes to possess these orchids. Orlean's explanation: "I wanted to see what Laroche had wanted." Orlean uses first person narrative throughout the book with her personal accounts being her primary source of material. There is a sense of repetition of information, but this is helpful to get a refresher course on some things because as we must remember, this is cold fusion to some of us. Her intense descriptions of various orchids allow you to be able to close your eyes and see an awe inspiring mental picture. Her writing keeps you reading, and wondering what she'll see and hear next.
Rating: 
Summary: Kind of slow
Review: I purchased this book based on a TV interview with the author I watched. At the time I read the book I knew nothing about orchids or Florida land sales. The book educated me in those areas. In reading the story I was always waiting for something to happen. It never did, so I was a little disappointed. It wasn't a bad book, but it was very slow at times.
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Summary: How can a flower become an obsession? Read on
Review: Susan Orlean's gift with this book is to bring the subject to us as it first appeared to her. What began with her as a magazine article became a novel-length tale of obsession and the pursuit of perfection. While some have criticized the author's lack of passion for orchids, it is precisely her position as an curious outsider seeking enlightenment that drives this tale. Orlean skillfully weaves around the tale of John Laroche's improbable scheme to plunder and eventually clone the ghost orchid from a Florida state nature preserve with stories about the history of orchid cultivation, the Seminoles, and the peculiar nature of the greenhouse culture in Florida. All the while, she seeks to see the elusive ghost orchid for herself. The pursuit of this goal, which is never successful, leads to several hilarious excursions into the swamps of Central Florida with the reluctant author and various guides, including at one time a park ranger and several members of a local prison's work release crew. Throughout Orlean displays a dry wit, an endearing curiousity, and a brilliantly personal writing style as she seeks to understand what drives some of us to pursue an object with obsessive passion and devotion.
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Summary: Why was this book written?
Review: Sorry I have to leave such a bad review, but please, where's the story? All I can say is that the message could have been a beautiful short story (2-3 pages), but a book, no way. Don't waste your time here.
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