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Curious Lives: Adventures from the Ferret Chronicles
 
 
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Curious Lives: Adventures from the Ferret Chronicles [Paperback]

Richard Bach (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)


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Book Description

September 27, 2005

Dear Reader:

Richard Bach is kind and gentle and stubborn as rocks about his writing. His books are visions of why we're here and where we're going, ideas that change lives, and he hides them behind titles so modest that nobody can tell what they're about:

Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Illusions.

One.

These are not life-changing titles.

"If a reader is meant to find my books," he insists, "she'll find them wherever they're hidden."

Back-to-back, Richard's books have been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than four years. His last story was told in five separate volumes, a delicious entertainment about lives of action and adventure, but free of evil or menace, crime or wickedness, or war. The best books, some say, that he's ever written, but guess his title:

The Ferret Chronicles.

We could have told him how many copies those books would sell, and we would have been right. They went invisible in bookstores; readers walked past―we're not into ferrets just now.

The Books That Nobody Read, and we knew why. It should have been one volume, not five. Ferrets tell his stories about living, but they're the actors, not the subject. Why did he call them ferret books?

Here they are, last chance, one volume. Richard budged on the title, but not much. Finally he said that we could put a note to readers on the back cover, if that would make us feel better.

We're a small publisher.

We love this book.

Truth must be told.

Hampton Roads Publishing Company



Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beginning in 2002 with Rescue Ferrets at Sea, Bach (Jonathan Livingston Seagull) served up a series of feathery adventure fables about a fantastical world populated by virtuous ferrets. Originally published by Scribner, the five books have been smartly condensed, repackaged, retitled and reshuffled into this stand-alone digest. The opening selection, "Shamrock," is a terrific introduction to the Ferret Chronicles, a story about a brave, inquisitive female detective named Shamrock Ferret, who uses her gift of psychometry (psychic recall) to unravel the mysterious celestial origins of the ferret population. "Budgeron and Danielle" (from Ferret Chronicle #3, Writer Ferrets Chasing the Muse) deftly commingles themes of love and humility and insider revelations about the publishing business in a soft-hearted love story featuring a golden-furred, sharply dressed, frustrated novelist and his supportive wife, a "pawdicurist." The remaining fables tackle issues of salvation amid treacherous open seawaters ("Bethany"), Montana ranching and star-crossed romance ("Cheyenne and Monty") and high-flying ferret pilots ("Stormy and Strobe"). Bach's ferrets live by a rigid code of "Courtesies" ("I claim for others the freedom to live as they wish, to think and believe as they will. I claim that freedom for myself"), and their enchanting, moralistic adventures, distilled here to their essence, pack a big punch. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing (September 27, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1571744576
  • ISBN-13: 978-1571744579
  • Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #434,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A former USAF pilot, gypsy barnstormer and airplane mechanic, Richard Bach is the author of more than three books.
He has not taken much thought to his page at Amazon, having just discovered today that it exists. He will likely return and fluff up this page a bit. His new website is www.richardbach.com.


 

Customer Reviews

10 Reviews
5 star:
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4 star:
 (1)
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2 star:    (0)
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Average Customer Review
4.9 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Uplifting bedtime reading, February 2, 2006
By 
This review is from: Curious Lives: Adventures from the Ferret Chronicles (Paperback)
This Hampton Roads reprint is an anthology of five small books written from the viewpoints of five sets of ferrets. Bringing these creatures' accounts under the roof of one book makes perfect sense here, because this really is one story. Furthermore, even as a sum of five books, Curious Lives is only 371 pages long.
This book is best read aloud at bedtime with your kids, spouse or lover. Its very nature and purpose entices the reader into a magical time zone to cuddle vicariously in the warmth of being cloaked in glistening soft fur.
It is undeniably wholesome; uplifting and inspiring without being sappy or preachy; poetic without being narcissistically grandiloquent. Though the ferret characters are endearing and tender, the author never succumbs to a facile cutesiness in his storytelling. Disney Films, Steven Spielberg and other purveyors of sentimental children's fare stand to learn a lot from Bach's honest, lucid story-telling and genuine wonderment at the deceptively simple things in life.
This particular reviewer had an unusually easy time suspending disbelief in order to embrace these ferrets' curiosity, love of the moment, psychologically realistic musings, and joyful message. This is saying a lot, given this reviewer's customary tone-deafness for other people's fantasy, hard-boiled cynicism toward magical thinking, suspiciousness of stories with a message, and difficulty tracking most visual descriptions.
I'd recommend saving this treat for a "cold and stormy night", accompanied by a soulful basso continuo of distant train song. Envelop yourself and your rapt audience in fur, whiskers and sweet thoughts.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Action packed moralistic Chronicals, November 14, 2005
This review is from: Curious Lives: Adventures from the Ferret Chronicles (Paperback)
Years ago, when I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull, I loved it and subsequently read the other books that Richard Bach wrote. It was exciting to me to find Bach's new book, a single volume of all five novels in the Ferret Chronicles, a world populated by admirable ferrets living by their code of ethics "The Courtesies". Some of the mottos that the ferrets live by are, the more ideas you have, the more shall you be given; you give who you are, the money follows - what you do with the money, there's a different test; we find our happiness only when we follow what we most love in all the world.
The chronicles are action packed tales about creativity, heroism, courage, and living a life for all to benefit.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars touching and sweet, April 25, 2007
This review is from: Curious Lives: Adventures from the Ferret Chronicles (Paperback)
This is a truly sweet and touching collection of stories about love, good conduct, trust, and living fully. One of the main themes is following your "highest right" and basing your actions on this ideal. In short, these stories are excellent entertainment and also provide good food for thought.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
Once there was a team of ferrets, exploring mysteries, who landed upon a small blue planet and discovered a hidden valley that opened onto the land of the humans. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
ferret fairies, ferret fairy, philosopher ferret, sheep resort, nutmeg ferret, bee bandits, thousand paws, hundred paws, ferret way, few paws, ferret food, wolf hat, other ferrets, young ferrets, highest right, two ferrets, number four engine, golden deed, microphone button, control yoke
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Budgeron Ferret, Miss Shamrock, Avedoi Merek, Ferret Three-Five, Shamrock Ferret, Ferret House, Jasmine Ferret, Monty Ferret, Where Ferrets Walk, Deepsea Explorer, Chloe Ferret, Starboard High, Bethany Ferret, Air Ferrets, Danielle Ferret, Loch Stoat, Miss Mischief, Stormy Ferret, Little Paw, Urbain de Rothskit, Montgomery Ferret, Stilton Ferret, Bevo the Hummingbird, Two Paws, Oakland Center
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The Ferret by Mary Shefferman
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