I received a book to review and even though it has nothing to do with orchids I felt that the book is so good I needed to let you know about it. I had never heard of thepurplebook® prior to receiving it, but found it provides an essential service and very good research into the best retail websites on the worldwide web.

The self-proclaimed purpose of the book is “the definitive guide to exceptional online shopping.” What Hillary Mendelsohn has done is to research retail sites on the web and rate them in a number of categories. The best ones are included in her book. All the sites must offer secure transactions, a customer service telephone number to call to talk to a person, and open browsing. The sites are then broken down to categories such as Home& Garden and then further into subcategories such as Accents, Lawn & Garden. This makes it extremely easy to narrow down your searches to what you are looking for.

Each site is presented with an interesting and often humorous description, easy to see categorization of what the site sells and icons showing the type of options offered by the site such as overnight shipping, whether or not the site is easy to navigate, etc.

She has also done a good job on providing guidelines for safe internet shopping by suggesting how to best shop on line and giving good advice on what to do if you have a bad experience. I actually had such an experience and was able to solve my problem using her suggestions.

This is a book I wish I had had before I did my online Christmas shopping. I will definitely use it for 2006!