Acquisitions: The Orchid Thief

Picked this up at a rummage sale of a middle-aged, rather attractive woman. Wifey humorously chastised me for chatting the MILF up about the book while counting my quarters to purchase The Orchid Thief. The rummage-sale woman complimented it for being an approachable book on an odd obsessive subject. My only familiarity with the book is the film Adaptation, which, I understand, has little to do with the actual book itself. I normally would pass a recent, common book, but I just reviewed The Dangerous World of Butterflies over at Collector's Quest, and The Orchid Thief is mentioned several times in its media materials. Butterflies is about the seedy underbelly of butterfly collectors and poachers, and when combined with the recently-read Flight Maps, on capturing and using birds for everything from fashion to target practice, then, too, The Orchid Thief and its illicit flower collectors, rounds out a trilogy of humanity's obsession with possessing the beautiful parts of nature.