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The orchid thief4/20/2023 ![]() And there are very few memories of my dad that pop into my head that don’t involve him watering his orchids, replanting his orchids, or bent over his sanitised glove box – a design of his own creation – or… the least pleasant from a sensory aspect: him cooking up his growing media, which often consisted of combinations of vegetable and fruit never, ever, designed to be together, like bananas and potatoes (omg, the smell). I’m pretty sure were there a way to tally up time spent at home vs. My mother’s flower shop, which my father’s greenhouses and laboratory were attached to, was a road, a small-town library parking lot, and a dirt alley away from our home. And no way could I be objective about orchids I literally grew up in greenhouses. If it were a visible thing it would be full of scrub forest, swamp land and the Gulf of Mexico (and hush puppies and iced tea). I can’t possibly be objective about either subject, because - let’s call it “Old Florida” even though I’m young enough to have missed out on the truly old Florida - is what my soul is made of. I preface this review with these facts because there’s going to be a strongly sentimental bias to my feelings about this book. I am a (born and bred) Floridian raised in a family of orchidists. The first thing you need to know is that this is a book about Florida and orchidists. In short, despite its acclaim I found to be tedious and self-indulgent, enough so that it will discourage me from reading more by Orlean. The books cover similar territory, but the theft in The Feather Thief, including perpetrator, context and aftermath, is far more compelling and well presented. It is possible that I was more disappointed in the book than I would have been otherwise since I read it shortly after completing. There is a theft, and a central character, but neither were as interesting to me as they are to the author. Rather, it consists of random, detailed observations on people who become, as the title indicates, obsessed with collecting orchids, and also on south Florida in general. ![]() It would be a mistake to categorize this book as "true crime" simply because of the word "thief" in the title.
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