The Orchid Thief - Part 2

As my faithful bloggers know, I've now been working on the same novel, Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief for over two weeks.  Its not really a long enough book to be taking me this much time to get through it.  I blame this partially on my starting to work longer shifts at the restaurant and partially on my getting sick and sleeping a lot, but mostly on the book being dull.  I've made it to the part I wanted to make it to (more on that in a moment), and now I'm going to stop.  I normally hate not finishing novels, but I've got a growing pile of books just begging to be read, so I'm laying this one to rest.

Now I want to make it clear that I'm not slamming Orlean's novel completely.  Like I mentioned in my previous post (this one), her writing style is just the type to draw you in and delight you.  Her subject matter, sadly, just doesn't keep up.  I sometimes found myself thinking I was reading some dusty, water-damaged copy of "The Complete History of Orchids"like you'd find in the free pile outside a second hand bookstore.  Some of the information was interesting, but a lot of it was unnecessary and boring.  When I got to the specific quotation I was looking for, I figured it was time to stop.

I'm feeling quite relieved after making the decision to stop reading The Orchid Thief.  I'm also excited to choose my next read!  But before I move on, I'd like to share a quotation from Orlean's novel, the same quotation my Chancellor shared with my grad class at my congregation ceremony last month.  I found it inspiring then, and still do now.  Hopefully you all can gain something from it as well.


"I passed so many vacant acres and looked past them to so many more vacant acres and looked ahead and behind at the empty road and up at the empty sky; the sheer bigness of the world made me feel lonely to the bone.  The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it.  There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go.  I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.  It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility."




I know this is a short blog, but I don't have much to say about this book, since I didn't finish it.  More on the next one, I promise!!