My Kind of Place

August 16, 2004
Orlean (The Orchid Thief
) hasn't so much been everywhere as she's been everywhere no one else has thought to go. In this collection, she focuses not on cities but on singular locales and events. She zooms in on an African music shop in Paris, a grocery store in Queens and a fertility blessing ceremony in Bhutan. Belying the book's bland title, Orlean's essays are rich in color, metaphor and crafty language. For example, in Iceland, "the wind never huffs or puffs but simply blows your house down." Orlean's subtle humor infuses her writing as she uncovers strange beauties: a taxidermy convention is "a surreal carnality, but all conveyed with the usual trade show earnestness and hucksterism, with no irony and no acknowledgment that having buckets of bear noses for sale was anything out of the ordinary." Orlean uses the word "travel" loosely; "I view all stories as journeys," she explains. Indeed, many of the final pieces aren't grounded by place, but they nicely round out an insightful collection by an exceptional essayist. Agent, Richard Pine
. (On sale Nov. 2)

Forecast:
This is Orlean's first book since the release of
Adaptation (based on
The Orchid Thief), which helped the author gain widespread recognition. Author publicity, a reading tour and print ads could make this a popular holiday pick. Simultaneous audio release.

October 1, 2004
Orlean, longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, as well as best-selling author of The Orchid Thief and The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, has pulled together a fascinating collection of travel essays in her latest book. It contains 31 glimpses into a variety of places, from Midland, TX, (birthplace of George Bush) to Havana, Cuba, and Queens, NY, to the African music scene in Paris, France. An essay on child beauty pageants titled "Beautiful Girls" is a well-balanced, absorbing look at the hopes and dreams of fond parents and the positive and negative aspects of the competition, illustrated through interviews and Orlean's apt descriptions. Orlean brings a certain empathy to the people she meets, such as pageant organizer Darlene Burgess, who started in this career when she learned that most pageant judges were related to the competitors. Essays range in length from two to 16 pages, but all are possessed of absorbing topics and high-quality writing. A great read that will be popular with general audiences, this work is recommended for public libraries.--Alison Hopkins, Brantford P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2004
New Yorker" staff writer Orlean is an adventurous journalist with a great instinct for offbeat stories, a playful sense of humor, and a dynamic prose style. She was portrayed by Meryl Streep in " Adaptation" , a film loosely based on her first book, " The Orchid Thief" (1998), then affirmed her verve and demonstrated her versatility in " The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup " (2001), a collection of lively profiles. Now, in this enormously pleasurable gathering of canny, vivid travel pieces and sprightly essays, Orlean proves herself to be an incisive chronicler of places as varied as Midland, Texas; New York City's immense and struggling Martin Luther King Jr. High School; and beautiful, hard-to-reach Bhutan. Besides her clever descriptions and charming candor, the most salient feature of Orlean's travel writing is her enthusiasm. Always determined to accentuate the positive, she discerns a bright side to her experience climbing Mt. Fuji in pouring rain and impenetrable fog, and enjoys the World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinois. Havana, Paris, Bangkok, and a grocery store in Queens all come to scintillating life under her keen gaze. Happy to serve as the "reader's proxy," Orlean hopes that her writing about intriguing places will make readers "feel more open" to the world's splendid diversity. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)