After following for some time the Susan Orlean twitter feed, I decided to read her bestselling "The Orchid Thief" from 2000.
It's subtitled "A true story of beauty and obsession" and a work of non-fiction about the Orchid industry and one of the more maniacal players in it (at least for most of the time Orleans was writing), John Laroche.
While I had no connection to the subject of the book (and found my interest waning at times as a result), I did find interesting the level of aforementioned obsession. A guy like Laroche may be a bit of a loon, but does provide good fodder for writing. Basic concept is a someone living to the extreme in life. Any project undertaken is going to be enormous, any failure the result of a grand conspiracy... and any moving away from something a complete abandonment.
It's reading about this extreme approach to life that made the book mostly worthwhile for me. I say mostly because if I had an interest in Orchids, I would have been more into the read... as it was, I liked it, but probably would have been good with simply reading her excellent New Yorker piece on Laroche the book came out of.
It's subtitled "A true story of beauty and obsession" and a work of non-fiction about the Orchid industry and one of the more maniacal players in it (at least for most of the time Orleans was writing), John Laroche.
While I had no connection to the subject of the book (and found my interest waning at times as a result), I did find interesting the level of aforementioned obsession. A guy like Laroche may be a bit of a loon, but does provide good fodder for writing. Basic concept is a someone living to the extreme in life. Any project undertaken is going to be enormous, any failure the result of a grand conspiracy... and any moving away from something a complete abandonment.
It's reading about this extreme approach to life that made the book mostly worthwhile for me. I say mostly because if I had an interest in Orchids, I would have been more into the read... as it was, I liked it, but probably would have been good with simply reading her excellent New Yorker piece on Laroche the book came out of.
