by Susan Orlean
The Orchid Thief by Susan OrleanShe travels to FL when she reads of the arrest of John LaRoche. He and Seminole tribe members stole orchids from protected state property. Some people are obsessed with these plants. She follows them and learns all about the plants. He had hoped to clone and sell the...
I like reading, botany, orchids, and non-fiction. You would think I would love the Orchid Thief. While I didn't quite love it, I liked it well enough. Here's why.It seems that Orlean became entranced with a newspaper blurb about a guy who stole some orchids from a state preserve in Florida. She hopp...
You could summarize The Orchid Thief as "Florida is a crazy place, y'all." It's one of the better non-fiction books I've read recently, starting with a scheme by John Laroche, a not-precisely-likeable but still very interesting fellow whom the author interviews and follows around in the course of wr...
The Orchid Thief is a little odd, in that it covers so much: tracing not simply Laroche's theft of the wild ghost orchid, but the history of orchid collecting (with a call-back to Paxton who played a significant role in At Home: A Short History of Private Life), the science of orchid growing, the hi...
This all began with a magazine article Orlean was writing about John Laroche, the title character. She headed down to Florida and spent months studying the guy and the environment in which he lived. It is an interesting tale. The book broadens from this introductory piece to cover other things Flori...
The basis for Charlie Kaufman's film "Adaptation". It is the story of the orchid obsessive John Laroche, and of orchid obsessives generally, with some interesting biology and history of orchids. There is also far more detail about Florida land reclamation, Indian history and property scams is releva...
Rex Stout’s fat detective suffered from orchidelirium. He would never vary his routine of working in his famous plant rooms on the top floor of the brownstone house no matter what the emergency, to Archie Goodwin’s consternation. Like bibliomania, orchidelirium is a mania that involves collecting — ...
This writer could make a cracked sidewalk an interesting subject. I know almost nothing about plants, but I quickly became drawn into this story of the people who are deeply passionate about...
I think this is something I learned about on Redearville. Ah, I do love stories about people who are obsessed with something.
Log in with Facebook 
