marcia's comments 05-16-02003

I am read The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. Before I saw the movie Adaptation. (havent seen the movie yet...) It is a non-fiction book about the author, orchids and a man named John Laroche. I expected a novel so I was wondering around the library unable to accept that the book was in the section of orchid books. But it was there. So I checked it out and it reads like a novel (at least the first few chapters) so far. Sort of -dry- tho. I find myself wishing I had bought a paperback copy because I want to write in the margins - complain in the margins about the writing, mostly. (there is always email if you want to complain about -my- writing...) The author takes a plant and tries to give it some human qualities like cleverness and determination. and I am not going for it. (page 49)

More on the orchid thief...I finished reading it today. Laroche is an interesting character. I am not so sure that it is the orchids that cause people's obsessions as the author implied. Laroche seems obsessive-compulsive with or without orchids. The book may have been better as a novel or a short story. There is no plot, actually. Large parts of the book are sort of stream-of-conciousness listing of orchid research facts and/or Florida and Seminole research. It is really irritating how the author repeats parts of passages over again.

Kent says it is like a book length New Yorker article. So he stopped reading after about 100 pages. I think it was a good move too. I read the whole thing, thinking it would be worth it. There would be something that tied it all together in the end. but there wasn't. The author used I, I, I in the book. It is like she let herself, being there, get in the way of telling the story. So a story really didn't get told the way it could have been.

The quote I liked in the book was from Tony the park ranger. The author asked him "what he thought it was about orchids that seduced humans so completely that they were compelled to steal them and worship them and try to breed new and specific kinds of them and then be willing to wait for nearly a decade for one of them to flower." (page 38) The ranger replies "I think the real reason is that life has no meaning. I mean no obvious meaning. You wake up, you go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody's always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time."

Which leads me to the next book I am reading... Po Bronson's What Should I Do With My Life? The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

Home : About : News : Opinion : Links : Photo Album : Recipe Club : Webmaster