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Summary: An Ode to Flora
Review: Orchids, my next great obsession! If you are thinking about bowing to Lady Flora, read this book. Either as a how-to, or a cautionary tale, hear bodies crashing down thru the forest canopy. Discover orchids that smell...naughty. Mr. Hansen paints a florid picture past and present of perfect obsession laced with the very real beauty of this extrordinary flower. Read and revel.
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Summary: Excellent book
Review: I just finished reading Orchid Fever and I really enjoyed it. It was recommended to me by an orchid dealer from whom I recently bought my first orchid (a Brachia veracosa- a second Orchid hybrid soon followed).I first became aware of Cites because I kept birds (I still have an umbrella cockatoo). I remember when Cites was first passed, it seemed like a good idea, then I attended an AFA convention and started hearing the horror stories. A breeder whose birds were confiscated later recovered most of them, but lost an irreplaceable rare Gang Gang Cockatoo, one of a bonded pair. It amazes me that Cites allows people to confiscate animals and plants only to let them die because of lack of knowledge of how to care for them. How is that protecting a species? This is an excellent thought provoking book. I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Orchid Fever by Eric Hansen
Review: When two men asked him to return to Borneo to help find a species of orchids, Eric Hansen didn't know he would be [drawn] into the orchid world. He traveled to Borneo, and also to Sarawak, England, France, Holland, Minnesota, etc. Orchids may sound boring, but Eric Hansen finds the adventurous side of the story. Orchid Fever is the tale of Hansen's venture into the orchid world of regulations, obsession, and orchidophiles.
Hansen meets people whose obsessions vary greatly from others he met. A Japanese real estate developer developed such an obsession with orchids that, when his house was demolished by an earthquake, he ran to his greenhouse to check his orchids, and then stopped to wonder where his wife was amidst the rubble. Tom Nelson falls on the opposite end of the spectrum and saves orchids by going to sites where orchids will be destroyed, and collects and replants them. Hansen meets the people who make orchid ice cream, the people travel to different orchid shows, and the man whose greenhouse "runs on a high-tech life-support system that controls light, heat, cooling, and humidity by computer."
Even a person with no interest in orchids can enjoy the adventure in this story. Hansen is a clever writer with a quick wit. "It was a crazy, whacked-out group of people, and whether I liked it or not, I could not get enough of them."
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Summary: A RARE HERMAPHRODITIC TALE
Review: The name said it all. "Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy" is one multi-faced novel which most readers would either cherish or dislike. Its pattern is dynamic: the initial momentum was sustained till the very end.
The 272 pages that constituted this true story explored the strange world of orchids using men and women as its horticultural tools. It is one ominous tale that is rich in humour.
This story has a hermaphroditic outlook. It shuffles between a crime thriller and a love story. It is well-written, and very captivating.
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Summary: Orchid Fever
Review: Orchid Fever is a great read. It is engaging, funny, informative, and outrageous. The author takes the reader into the hidden world of orchids introducing growers, breeders, scientists and hobbyists. Along the way the reader learns many fascinating facts about plant botany, plant politics, pollination processes and the many uses of orchids. Eric Hansen, an adventure traveler, is an excellent writer, immediately engaging the reader's attention and holding it throughout the book. He is a real storyteller. Each chapter reads like a delicious short story. The book was our Reading Group selection this month as a prelude to the big orchid show in our area next month. It was agreed we would never again look at orchids in quite the same way. We had a lively, laughing time discussing the book and in conclusion it received an all-thumbs-up.
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Summary: A compulsive and an essential read!
Review: Whether you happen to be an orchid lover, or merely a curious bystander, "Orchid Fever (A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust and Lunacy)" will have you by turns helpless with mirth and seething with indignation, or else simply agog with incredulity from start to finish. For it is, quite simply, an absolutely stunning piece of investigative journalism, dressed up as a tale of personal obsession and eccentricities. Written using plain language and with an outstanding witticism, it makes for compelling reading throughout, whether or not you know anything about orchids, or the orchid-growing and trading communities that it explores. Chapter by chapter, alternating hilarious episodes with the downright unsettling or just plain unbelievable, Eric Hansen gradually lays bare the seedy underbelly of a world that perhaps few of us realise exists. He reveals an alarming world-wide conspiracy, fuelled by greed, protected and upheld by idiotic international bureaucracy and a network of power politics, which daily threaten innocent lives and legitimate livelihoods as well as vast swathes of natural fauna that they purport to be protecting. Populated as it is by gentle, likeable heroes, blackguardly villains, utter buffoons and the most outrageously bizarre of characters, it is sometimes easy to forget that this book is factual, so far-fetched are some of the events and scenarios that its author recounts. And yet, this somehow makes the book all the more scary, for occasionally things happen to make you realise that it is not a work of fiction. And at that point, the anger sets in... anger that things should be this way and are likely to remain so, despite the best efforts of some of the book's obvious heroes. Thoroughly researched over a period of some seven years and never less than fascinating, this book exposes the full and terrifying consequences for anyone who succumbs to orchid fever. It is an essential read for anyone who thinks that orchids are nothing more than beautiful but harmless flowering plants. Or indeed for anyone who has never heard of fox testicle ice-cream!
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Summary: The Latest from One of Our Finest Contemporary Writers
Review: If Eric Hansen were to publish a shopping list, I would read it. He is a superb writer, and he displays his talents to perfection in "Orchid Fever." That I have no personal interest in orchids is irrelevant; Hansen brings his story to life with a fascinating cast of characters, journeys to the ends of the earth and back in search of orchids and their admirers, and hilarious descriptions of lust, intrigue and exotic behavior among humanity's fine floral friends. Every increment of the book is exquisitely crafted: sentences, paragraphs and chapters stand on their own as perfect gems, yet the book as a whole is so beautifully paced that it holds your interest throughout. I recommend that you read "Orchid Fever" aloud with someone you love in order to fully appreciate every finely polished, meticulously constructed sentence. My partner and I did so, and spent many delightful evenings laughing our heads off, reading and re-reading Hansen's gorgeously loony descriptions of the universe of orchids and orchid lovers.
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Summary: Exactly....Orchid Fever
Review: After living in denial for many years about desiring orchids, the coming out party just got rowdy with this book. It speaks to the true orchid enthusiast that enjoys the fascination, mystery, and excitement of orchid collecting. Each bizzare, descriptive story felt like I was on location in some sci-fi adventure. The author's writing style paints amazing pictures of each place while trying to understand the obsession orchids can create and in the search discovers many diverse personalities of the orchid world. The book didn't leave my hands until it was finished. In sharing this book with a fellow enthusiast, I've made plans to travel to different places in search of the inspiration for many of the chapter stories. Each one was unique, but all shared the same passion. Orchid lovers will enjoy, anyone else, can't tell.
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Summary: A gripping page-turner--believe it or not!
Review: I read "Orchid Fever" over the weekend and couldn't put it down. It is alternately funny, infuriating, fascinating, and--yes--titillating, and it is *never* boring! I didn't want it to end, and can't stop wondering what has become of the people in the book--and whether Eric has suffered any ill effects from his expose of the outlandish, wrongheaded CITES regulations. I can only hope that CITES will encounter enough resultant unfavorable publicity from this book to spur some much-needed changes. I now plan to read Eric's other books; he is a superb writer! I will never look at an orchid the same way again. (By the way, the more I look at the orchid photos on the cover, the naughtier they appear.) Enjoy!
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Summary: Real People, Real Passions
Review: Wow who would think that these aren't fictional characters so bizare and intense are their actions. Hansen ties this diverse cast togeather thru their passion of orchids in a wonderfully evokative fashion that made it a hard to put down book. In fact I reread it immediately it was so fasinating.
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