Shelf Life: Susan Orlean

Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.

The New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean’s latest book—her 12th, the memoir Joyride—was inspired by “a combination of a few things,” the author says. “First of all, Covid! During that awful time, I think many of us felt very contemplative, and spent a lot of time ruminating about our lives and what matters to us. For me, that led to thinking about where I’ve been and what I’ve done, and that naturally evolved into a book. In addition, I realized it had been 25 years since I’d written The Orchid Thief, and that felt like an anniversary worth writing about.”

The Orchid Thief, first published in 2000, was later made into the 2002 Oscar-winning film Adaptation, and Orlean herself was portrayed by Meryl Streep. Other film and TV adaptations abound: Orlean’s story about surfer girls in Hawaii became 2002’s Blue Crush; another on racing homing pigeons became 2024’s Little Wing; and the author is now adapting The Library Book for TV. She’s also written for HBO’s How to With John Wilson, for which she was nominated for an Emmy, and she appeared in the Thomas Kinkade documentary Art for Everybody.

The hardest part of her writing process, Orlean says, is “those first few sentences. They set the tone and the pace, so they’re really important, and I’m convinced that if they aren’t spectacular, readers will abandon me. No matter how many first sentences I’ve written, each one feels like life or death.”

The Cleveland-born and -raised, Los Angeles-based bestselling author learned to read from the newspaper; was a tomboy growing up; wanted a Chincoteague Pony as a tween; was editor of her high school yearbook; worked as a rock critic at the alt-weekly Willamette Week in Portland, Oregon, shortly after graduating from the University of Michigan; has two dogs, Ivy and Buck; lives in an iconic house designed by Rudolph Schindler; overcame a fear of flying via hypnosis; taught herself how to play the ukulele; experienced a few firsts in the south of France (eating yogurt, sculpting, and smoking unfiltered cigarettes); has been a New York Times crossword puzzle and Jeopardy! clue; and is an adult literacy volunteer at her local library.

Likes: Art Deco buildings; cheap drugstore beauty products; ranunculus; andSons chocolates; chemical smells (manicures, Magic Markers, and gasoline, in particular); HBO’s The Pitt; the Library of Congress.

Dislikes: bad similes; self-help and instruction manuals; long nails; the smell of weed; Westminster Dog Show handler fashion.

Obsessions: fashion, especially Japanese designers, SSENSE, and GapStudio (she also recently walked the Susan Alexandra x Rachel Antonoff Best in Show event at New York Fashion Week); pens (like Sharpie S-Gels); Birkenstocks; eyelash extensions.

Good at: ledes; making lists; self-criticism; procrastinating when on deadline; mastering jet lag; public speaking.

Bad at: relaxing.

Peruse through her book recommendations below.

A God In Ruins by Kate Atkinson.

People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry.

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright.

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne.

Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt.

33 Place Brugmann by Alice Austen.

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden.

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel.

Great Plains by Ian Frazier.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker.

Aarhus City Library in Aarhus, Denmark.

Library Foundation of Los Angeles.

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