Rating: 
Summary: Fast Start, Slow Finish
Review: I came to The Orchid Thief with high expectations, the book recommended to me by several friends. I left disappointed. While the first hundred pages or so were absorbing and the extreme fascination that orchid collectors have for their plants interesting, The Orchid Thief ultimately lacked the narrative momentum and stylistic writing of, say, A Civil Action (a much, much better, and much more readable, book than this). The strain of stretching a magazine article to book length shows as the author delves into tangential and even pointless digressions about Florida history that often have nothing to do with orchids or plants or much of anything. It's just padding, and lacking a compelling central character (the author occasionally, and intriguingly, comments on her own reactions to it all, but appears to hold back just as I as a reader want to know more), the book plods on and, for the reader, proves as slow-going as a trek through a swamp.
Rating: 
Summary: PASS!
Review: What a bore! If you really want a magical reading experience there are thousands of books more worthy. This is like a 260 page magazine aritcle - and not even an interesting one. The book goes nowhere and ends in the same place. A complete waste of time and money. I skimmed through parts looking for anything to gain my interest. Before you categorize my review - I am a huge fan of the area in Florida and an orchid lover.
Rating: 
Summary: What's wrong with the New Yorker...
Review: ...is that its profiles have degenerated into this sort of book. The classic NYer profile-expanded-into-a-book was John Hershey's "Hiroshima" and it was followed by lots of good ones from Berton Rouche and others. This book has the same origins but the author injects herself into the book far too much and is not an interesting person in her own right. In addition to being dull, she is a condescending New Yorker (geographical reference this time) who knows nothing about the rest of America -- and it shows. This book does have its moments -- especially the accounts of the 19th century ordchid hunters and their adventures, but we are all too quickly back in the author's navel gazing.
Rating:
Summary: disappointment
Review: While the subject of this book is captivating, the story seemed extraordinarily thin to me. Orlean's prose is, for the most part, bland, although there are a few moments of clever, vivid description. I came away feeling that this was a non-story. Comparisons to John McPhee are absurd. There is no such brilliance here. Instead there's a great deal of light, surface observation. And those observations are not elucidating or exact in the way we expect first-rate writing to be.
Rating: 
Summary: Swamp fever!
Review: I love this kind of book! Using the story of the charismatic John Laroche as her starting point to explore inexplicable personal passions, Susan Orlean takes off into the botany of orchids, the history of orchid fever, vivid descriptions of Florida swamps, stories of Florida swampland scams...so many topics you never knew you could find interesting! I read this book after reading a chapter in The New Yorker, and I couldn't stop turning the pages. As an antiques collector, I found John Laroche and his obsession to collect fascinating, and Florida has not been so interesting since the first Carl Hiassen I read.A fascinating book that would definitely have been improved by the inclusion of some illustrations of the orchids that are at the heart of everything in this book. I couldn't even find an identification of the orchid pictured on the cover! The editor was asleep at the wheel, but Susan Orlean was wide awake.
Rating: 
Summary: Be careful! You WILL run out and buy an orchid!
Review: I found this book through a magazine I read; I love nature, though so I gave it a try. What a fantastic and informative book! What intrigued me most were the two main stories in the book; the story of the orchid itself, as an exotic prize that was long coveted by the rich of the world, and the modern story of John Laroche and his quest for the elusive Ghost Orchid, an eerily beautiful flower that blossoms briefly in some of the most seemingly unattainable locales. By the middle of the the book my only complaint was that a photo of the nearly mythical blossom was not anywhere in the book, I scoured the net to find a picture (and it truly is as the book says). Read this book and enjoy... but be prepared to get started on the hobby of growing orchids, the one possible side effect!
Rating:
Summary: orchidelirium, new yorker style
Review: The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orleans, discusses the case of John Laroche, a Florida man who was obsessed with orchids. Laroche took protected orchids out of the Fakahatchee Strand, an area of swamp in Florida. Orleans got to know Laroche and other orchid obsessives, and it's an interesting account of their world. Various shonky companies were responsible for the Florida land booms (and busts) which were the prelude to the govt's acquisition of the land of the Fakahatchee Strand. Plots of land were neatly subdivided but never inhabited, and perhaps the most compelling description, for me, was of the curious occurence of desolate suburban streets, complete with street signs, that cut through the wild landscape: a town with neither inhabitants nor homes, but streets maintained by an anonymous individual dubbed the "ghost grader." There was just a *little* too much detailed description of the "amazing" Florida landscape for my liking, and of Orleans' personal distate when confronted with swamp; you feel like she's just trying to capture how icky it is, but after a while there's a bit of a "so what? it's swamp" effect. Her disappointment that she couldn't buy a diet soda at one remote store fails to pluck at your heartstrings (or mine, anyway). But she does give a really compelling history of the so-called orchidelirium that gripped the Victorians, of rather astounding orchid-collecting expeditions across the tropics, and of the orchid subculture. Orleans describes Florida as a state under siege -- from water,from plunderers, from wild foliage. I enjoyed this book -- Orleans writes for the New Yorker, and it's like a New Yorker article that never ends, which is my idea of reading heaven.
Rating:
Summary: Plenty of Facts and Figures, But All Orchids Aren't Pretty
Review: After the first couple of pages I was definately into this book. I didn't know that there are no black orchids, and that it will take seven years before an orchid will flower. This is the most interesting nonfiction I've read so far this year. There is a black cloud however. The author inserts herself into the narrative as almost a counter to John Laroche, the man responsible for "stealing" ghost orchids from the Fakahatchee swamp. The two are different, really different, and it's apparent from the author's tone that she's uncomfortable with him. He's rude, smokes too much, doesn't exercise, etc. If only the author could have found a more redemptive light in which to display the man's shortcomings! I didn't really think that any of the portrayals she gave was reason enough to provoke the unfortunate characterization of John Laroche, a living man, in print. Rather the opposite, I began to dislike the author for being too uptight, too judgemental, jogging too regularly, etc. Is it possible to portray a character with some measure of realism without resorting to a comparison between subject and author?
Rating:
Summary: Quirky, offbeat -- a great escape!
Review: I cracked this book on a flight from Seattle to Chicago and I barely raised my for head for 4 hours. I found protagonist John Laroche a likable albeit maddening dingbat and the little known world of orchid gathering, collecting, and obsessing-over was fascinating to me. What it is about Florida that produces such wildly eccentric characters, in the orchid community as well as the Seminole Indian reservation? An education to be sure and a relaxing, funny read. Hats off to author Susan Orlean for wading in the muck and the heat of the swamps to deliver a vivid picture of what great extremes diehard orchid enthusiasts will do for kicks.
Rating:
Summary: Creative Nonfiction Makes Great History
Review: I should say, first of all, that I'm getting my PhD in history. I'm not a literary critic, and I'm not as well-read as I'd like to be. But I thought this book was brilliant. It is so incredibly difficult, when writing a "true story," to choose that which is truly important and deeply evocative, that "real" histories usually end up turning fascinating stories into crushing bores. I don't know if the majority of readers appreciates the erudition required to write such a riveting history-- just think that for every tangent the author chose, she had to research several others! Anyway, I loved it-- I loved the frank discussion of her own problems with the orchid world, I loved the effortless links between "history" and "reportage," which really aren't so very different after all, I admire her ability to enter a different (and totally bizarre!) universe and look at it with humor and sympathy, and I think she must be a really interesting person herself. In my opinion, this is a model of writing the history of the present (and I love orchids myself).
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