In ‘Joyride,’ Susan Orlean Takes on Her Most Challenging Subject yet: Herself.

In ‘Joyride,’ Susan Orlean takes on her most challenging subject yet: Herself.

As a writer Susan Orlean reigns over the quirky, the odd, the overlooked. She’s built a career out of chasing her own curiosity. This pint-sized redhead once waded through Florida swamps to research an article that later became the book “The Orchid Thief,” which then became the movie “Adaptation,” which then won an Academy Award. She took her son to the Los Angeles Central Library for a research project and ended up finding her own project that …

Susan Orlean Reveals the Book That Made Her a Better Writer

The ‘Joyride ’ author takes ELLE’s literary survey, suggesting books by Lawrence Wright, Yael van der Wouden, Kate Atkinson, Richard Lloyd Parry, and more.