Breton Books

If you have an interest in Breton, there are few places to find good materials short of ordering them from France. A Turn of the Ermine is a welcome exception to the situation, offering a variety of texts of cultural interest. For those interested in Celtic lore, there are old legends as well as modern poetry evoking them. There are also texts of historical interest, including on the plight of Breton in the face of French. The book begins with Breton's pagan past, including a lai from Marie de France - old French translations being the oldest remnant of Breton lore. It ends with women writing about women. All texts are translated into English, for those new to the language or who are interested in the content for other than linguistic reasons.

For those seeking a clear picture of the Breton language and culture from a Breton perspective, this is the best English language text I have found. It is to be commended to all who love Brittany and her language.

I have used this cd in a entry level college course and found it very helpful for my students. The instruction and quiz questions are well done.

I loved the start of this book and found the writing style and creativity of the author hard to resist. At the end, however, I found that I had been entraced into spending a lot of time reading a book I found ultimately distasteful and offensive. A book loaded with tragedy is climaxed when a teenage lesbian love-affair comes out of no-where and then is tragically cut-off. The awful way in which the affair was interupted was disturbing, no doubt, but at the same time I was very disturbed and saddened by the unrealistic and unhealthy "love affair" going on between the two teenagers. The author has talent, but she needs to tie that talent to wisdom and themes that ring with much more depth and truth then this.

Had I known that this sad book was about incest, I never would have purchased it.

Talk about dysfunctional families! This crew takes the all-time prize. Filled with family secrets, passion, secrets, and shame, Ms. McDonald's novel tells the rich saga of five generations of a coal-mining community family in Nova Scotia. It truly is an epic, lasting about 700 pages, but every page is a gem.

This is an intensely deep book that is impossible to put down from start to finish. It is the twisted story of a family in the early 1900's. The author's writing is artfully realistic. All of the characters are memorable and superbly written, leaving a lasting effect on the reader. This book isn't for those who are easily shocked or offended because the author tackles difficult topics like racial tension, homosexuality, incest, and religion. This isn't a quick read because there are hidden secrets and riddles intermingled throughout the book and I had to pay close attention to absorb them all.

It was one of thoes books that I couldn't put down although I cringed with each passsing page. It gave me nightmares. It was real.

It left me depressed. I dislike writers who use excessive profanity and seem to enjoy it.

Ashley MacIsaac's autobiography titled "Fiddling With Disaster: Clearing the Past," is a gripping, powerful read. Ashley is severely honest as he tells his story to writer Francis Condron.

The book is absolutely a page turner from beginning to end. I've basically put my life on hold the last few days to indulge myself totally in Fiddling With Disaster.

Ashley shares the struggles and highlights of being famous and rich, and then being famous and poor. Ashley should be applauded for telling his story as frankly as he does. He takes responsibility for his own actions, but readers will decide for themselves if the world dealt him a good or bad hand.

Ashley leaves no stone unturned. He talks about unsafe sex, HIV, what he thinks of Anne Murray, his thoughts of Cape Breton, other famous people, drugs, fame, and the list goes on and on. There wasn't a page to the 279 page book that I didn't enjoy totally.

After closing the book, I think some day on Ashley MacIsaac's headstone that it could truthfully read: I DID IT MY WAY.

I highly recommend this book. It is the best autobiography I've read to date. You won't want to put it down.

$18.95 is the Canadian list price, not the US price. Buy it in a book store, at a fair and correct price. Amazon.ca has made a mistake on the price of this (most enjoyable, and shocking!) book.

There is nothing disasterous about this novel. Ashley MacIsaac was raw, edgy and above all truthful when re-telling his life. A book that is the best autobiography I have ever read.
If you know who Ashley MacIsaac is, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Fiddler, gay, crack addict, and East Coast. Chances are you thought of all four. Mr. MacIsaac does not dispute any of these and at long last was able to have his say on his life. A poignant look at his life, his way.
His thoughts on fame by 18, being the first to break the East Coast music mold, MacLeans crashed and burned his 'high' by plastering across the country he was gay. He discusses in depth how this made him and how he dealt with it.
His book is very prolific and tells everything about him in a realstic yet controversial in some ways, too. He admits to disliking to do most shows he does but that he relished every show he did pre-fame with hi how are you today.
Many people will read this and probably still think he is a nutcase but I still beleive he is an incredible musician. No one can ever dispute that. He put East Coast Music on the map and made it 'cool' and he has fused the fiddle and rave music together . . . something no one has ever done before, and probably never will. The drugs made Ashley destitute but it was the music that lifted him above it, and put him back on track.
Want to know the real Ashley MacIsaac, the one outside the media? Read this book, it may just change your mind.

The book is an eye opening look at what goes wrong when a Scottish boy from the Eastern most edges of Canada take his fiddle out of the small world he grew up in, and into the big universe that surrounds Cape Breton. The battle for Ashley MacIsaac's soul began when he was young, when everyone discovered what a genius he was. Yes, he could've been called a child prodigy. From the time he was a champion dancer to his unwavering talent at the fiddle, Mr. MacIsaac was destined, I think, to end up where he did. Some was his fault, which he readily admits, but I think the entertainment industry itself will suck anyone who has a talent dry. Obviously, he should've never gone to New York at the age of 17 all by himself. It was that miscalculation from all parties involved that lead him down the road of self-destruction.
MacIsaac has a brilliant talent, and the world fell in love with it. But the people who were listening to his music, who went to his shows, expected one thing, while in reality, he was giving them something completely different. Tradition is a dangerous word sometimes, and because he played traditional type Celtic music, everyone presumed MacIsaac was just like his music. But if his history could be used as a barometer, he was nothing but unpredictable. I commend him for being open about his sexuality, but he discovered the hard way that being to open could cost you. While I want to believe the world is ready to except their gay children, the entertainment industry just doesn't know what to do with them. While Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang have a large fan base that buy's their CD's, most of their live shows have more lesbians than straight in the audience. MacIsaac wanted to be known as a fiddler player who happened to be gay, and not gay fiddler, Ashley MacIsaac. But with a combination of drugs, guilt, ego and raw talent, he became something that was far removed from reality. He certainly deserves more credit than he gets, but once you become a pariah of the press, no matter what you do, you're doomed to be reminded of all your past digressions. Fiddling offers nothing new in one sense -another biography about a superstar undone by fast life of drugs and more drugs - but it also shows clearly why sometimes becoming a music superstar is very dangerous career. MacIsaac admits that his drug addiction sprung mostly from boredom, with the endless touring, and with too much downtime. One can learn from his experience. If you want to be a music star, make lots of money, find something to occupy your time between gigs. Drugs, like pot, may help expand your "reality" but drugs like cocaine and crack lead nowhere but to a boulevard of broken dreams. And bankruptcy. I love his music, I enjoyed the book. I hope and pray that Ashley has finally put his demons behind him. He nearly lost his soul, but he found the courage in himself to change his destiny. He did it on his own terms -just like everything else - and discovered that once in a while, you can go to hell, and still survive.

I suppose that this book is going to be read by the ones who are familiar with work of Breton. Let us just say, for the sake of beeng, that I do not encourage others to read it. You will soon lose yourself in endless circles that great nadrealist has woven into his text.
Very complicated to understand this book presents authors view on love - or as he says it - "only possible love is mad love". Now, this statemnt can be observed as a kind of tautological experiment, but it can also be observed as poetic value in itslef.
In the beeginig very fluent in his narrative, Breton, almost instantly loses himself in some sort of weird hermetism, in which there are motives and object that are totaly undechiperable, at least to no one but himself.
Read this only if you are just studying french modernism or something, otherwise skip it...

I found it fairly difficult to make it through most of this book. I should add, difficult yet rewarding. The first few sections reminded me of "Nadja" with their seemingly meaningless description of mundane activities. As I went through the book I realized, as I did with "Nadja," that these opening chapters are essential to establishing both the attitude and ideas of the story. As I got further and further into it I found that the concepts where easier to grasp and the text easier to read and I must admit that I was frustrated with the fist part of the book and certain other parts that I felt were irrelevant to the subject or just plain annoying. But as I finished the last chapter it all came together for me and I felt the entire concept and reasoning of the book was elucidated in the end. A book I probably would have given 3 stars to for the first half surprised me with its beauty and genius in the end.

This book is essentially essays and ideas elucidating Breton's concept of "Mad Love." It was written for his love interest at the time and some parts of the book include her or speak of and to her but a lot of it is directed to the reader. His beautiful imagery and abstract description drag the reader through his bizarre ideas. As the "story" (there really is no narrative in this book) builds on itself and the essence of the blossoms in your mind, you just might find yourself with a new idea of love. In the end I felt very rewarded with this new idea of love and almost felt like a better person for it.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Surrealists or Andre Breton. I do not recommend this for people looking for an easy read or people who haven't read any other Breton.

Breton, the overrated, dull and inept absolutist leader of the "so-called iconoclastic" surrealists was not as bombastic as people who worship him would have you believe. This 'work', merely an arranged compendium of useless episodes and scenes, is completey boring and without any enrichment, all it does is tire the reader. The style is marginally academic, that is to say, it is written in long, flaccid sentences with too much self-exaltation included. I was bored by the entire book, Breton imagines that it was revolutionary to write about fractured and obtuse occurrences which have nothing to do with anything except his own idea of importance. He meanders through pretentious descriptions which are trite. Don't be fooled by his sycophantic adherents who believe that he actually "invented" surrealism and art. I'd rather read the true ramblings of a madman than this ordure.

Andre Breton's Mad Love is truly a work of art.Written in a surrealist manner it celebrates love and lovers. It finds beauty in such ordinary things such as iron masks, spoons, and trees. Never has there been another book that promotes romanticism such as this. Bravo Breton! You have made me proud to be a person in a monogomous relationship. It is a true celebration of the heart and of the soul.

This book not only seems to be written for highschool students, it's also prone to extreme bouts of oversimplification and pandering to the "oppressed minority" crowd.

Oversimplification: upon reaching the topic of psychology, they manage to sum Freud up in one paragraph. Not only that, it's a paragraph that feels like it was cribbed from the back of a cereal box. Not only that, what they give is a stereotype of his "id/ego/superego" idea - nothing more. No, for example, Civilization and its Discontents, or Totem and Taboo - I guess they have nothing to do with Sociological theory in any way. Not only that, they then sum up one other important thinker in another paragraph, and then ignore all the rest of psychology that's ever happened.

Pandering: I actually wanted to start a drinking game for each time they mention "race/ethnicity, gender, and class". But then, at chapter 5, they drop "race" and just use "ethnicity, gender and class". This phrase really comes up on every page. I guess the idea is that people experience the world differently according to their race/ethnicity, gender, and class? Wow! I wonder why? No - you don't get an answer to that, all you get is "race/ethnicity, gender and class" over and over again.

This book is pathetic and I strongly urge academics to NOT choose it for a first-year text! There's so much better writing out there that goes into more detail while still being readable. This book is best suited for highschool students, and even then if you only want them to kill time instead of actually learning anything.

I found the material dry and boring. The book tries to provide examples so much that it goes on and on about it.

I took a course using this book during my 2nd year & learned a great deal from it. As a PSYC major, I was interested in how fundamental Sociology is in creating a foundation for psychological studies. So...in short, a sociology text like this should NOT be used just by Sociology students. It was definitely fascinating (as well as current, relevant, & unbiased)!

This book has been used by many college institutions as the basis of their Sociology instruction. The book contains many real life sociological issues and presents them to the reader in a way that is both modernized and easy to understand. The author of this book has many years of experiance in the Sociological field and has authored and co-authored many sociological books. This specific book provides an extremely good fundemental basis for individuals seeking a strong basic foundation for a focus on Sociological education.

I bought the product and ordered the CDs. Not cheap. What I got were CDs of people speaking very fast - to me useless.
I bought Euro-Speak and tried Magnum on Breton..both these have should have spent less time on unique user interfaces and more on content. They have interfaces that take over the whole screen and cannot be minimized and again, cutesy interfaces for learning - rather than efficient.
I was praying for a product like Byki - if only they put out a Breton learner.
Their learning interface is no nonsense and it was like a game that you could make as fast-paced as you wanted. The Romanian I studied stuck in my head.
I am reluctant now to buy the book in that I might end up with a CD and Book that don't have good learning engineering.
Folks like Rosetta have done what many others have failed to do. Unfortunately - they don't offer Breton either.

The English-speaking learner of Breton faces three challenges: 1) As a Celtic language influenced by French, Breton is very different from English. 2) There are four major dialects and no universal standard. 3) There are several spelling systems in use, and you have to know the language enough to sound things out and guess at alternate spellings if the text you have uses a different system from your dictionary. Colloquial Breton addresses all three challenges well: 1) The grammar explanations are clear and rooted in understanding what's going on, not mastering theory. 2) It teaches a hybrid of the three major dialects that will give you entrée into the particular dialects, rather than getting hung up on presenting dialectical variations. 3) It uses the most common spelling system, so outside resources (especially on the web) are more likely to be approachable.

If you're looking for a safe gateway to learning Breton, this is your best bet.

Note that Breton is hard to sound out before you've heard it. If you're willing to put in extra work, you can find a free course with audio at [...]. But if you want to stick with the book, it's a good idea to get the accompanying CDs.

I believe this is the only book of its type about the Breton Language intended for the use of English speakers.
Unfortunately, it's also rather a big disappointment.
Colloquial Breton is organized much like the other Colloquial-series language books, which is what attracted me to it in the first place. I've been very pleased with Routledge's other books of the series. And, as I said, I don't believe there are any other textbooks of Breton for English speakers, so I wouldn't have had any choice. I do speak French, so I could have used Le Breton sans Peine from Assimil, but it's very expensive. Routledge's Colloquial series are, for my money, the best and most reasonably-priced self-study language courses on the market.
However, Colloquial Breton isn't entirely like the other Colloquial books I've seen. It throws rather a lot of information at you, rather too fast. You are exposed to a great deal of vocabulary from the outset (there are several dialogues and reading selections in each chapter) and the grammatical explanations are rapid fire and cursory. You have to read everything very carefully or you'll miss a word, a structure, an explanation, or something. The description of the sounds of the language is sketchy at best, but it does manage to drive firmly into the ground the notions that there are lots of exceptions and irregularities, and that "You really do need to buy the recordings to get the most out of this book"! Well, of course. The CDs (or cassettes) cost at least as much again as the book! Why offer the book for sale separately at all when what they really want you to do is pay full price for the book with CDs of tapes?
But the book does come separately- that's how I've bought it- and it's inadequate in many ways, even if one did have the recordings. Of course, it is a good idea to have sound recordings of a language you happen to be studying, but the book should be able to stand on its own. This one does not.
The exercises are really rather lame. There are no translation exercises, English to Breton, which is what I prefer- I realize some people don't like that kind of exercise, but it works for me quite well. But even the exercises the book does have provide little opportunity for application of all the grammar and vocabulary they throw at you. Instead, the exercises give me the impression that the authors needed to make a deadline, or else simply lacked the patience, the creativity, and the industry to make up any good ones. One type of exercise in the book consists of repeating the same two sentences over and over, the activity consisting of substitution of different personal names or different professions or whatever. I fail to see how this is supposed to teach me how to apply anything from the lesson except a few items of vocabulary. They don't teach you how to apply the grammatical concepts, nor, really, how to use the vocabulary effectively. Some of the exercises actually consist of
answering *in English* questions (the questions, too, are in English) about a reading passage! Some of these questions are actually in Breaton and/or meant to be answered in Breton, but not enough of them.

Cape Breton Road by D.R. MacDonald is the story of a young man with a good heart but a penchant for taking risks like "borrowing" fancy cars. Banished from the US to live with his uncle in Canada, he picks a spot high up in the hills to secretly cultivate marijuana, a cash crop "guaranteed" to buy his independence. When he falls painfully, hopelessly in love with the uncles live-in girlfriend, the tension and bitterness between the two men begins to mount. Cape Breton Road is a charming story that holds you in suspense as you hope against hope that this wholesome but naive young man won't get caught at some of his "indiscretions". Beautiful prose, wonderfully descriptive and insightful . . .a work of art.

I gave this book three stars for one reason. It had a very unsatisfactory ending. I felt cheated. The conclusion was not an ending in the real sense.

It left several questions unanswered. The most important ones being the fate of the protagonist and his uncle. The author either ran out of interest, or made the beginners error of letting the reader come up with his own ending.

The book and characters was so very vivid and beautifully drawn that you could literally breathe the air and atmosphere. Then we are left high and dry.

This writer is no amateur. He is brilliant. I loved this book. And because I did, because I cared about the characters, i wish he had done a better job on the conclusion.

Still and all, I intend to read his other books. I guess that is the real test.

Cape Breton Road is a book that could have been a masterpiece of literature. Instead, it turned into a mind-numbing repetitive description of woods and water. Count, if you can, how many times he uses the same descriptive words for trees and cold. The book comes more alive in the description of Innis' painful feelings of love for the unattainable Claire. As for the ending, it reminds me of the gimmick sometimes used by film makers. You supply the ending. Worse, the author didn't know how to end his book.

The description given on the back cover sounded intriguing but the book reads like a teenage soap opera written by a randy young man whose goals in life are limited to getting high and stealing cars. The only reason I kept reading was in hopes that this fellow might be inspired by place and become a decent human being. The reason I didn't like this book isn't because the fellow never did see the error of his ways, it is because the nice details about the nature and inhabitants of Nova Scotia got lost in the silly details about a 19-year old's hormones and wonders of pot. What a bore.

Other reviewers have given plot details and discussed their reactions to the novel's ending, so I'll just cut to the chase: Cape Breton Road is amazingly well-written -- without the prolixity and gratuitous detail of so many contemporary novelists. Its prose is lean and spare, and therefore intense. Every detail strikes the reader as authentic; every experience woven into the plot has been "earned" or "lived" -- come by honestly and set down with something akin to reverence. Its presentation of nature and its impact on the observer are fine and true, reminiscent of D. H. Lawrence at his best, as in Sons and Lovers. Cape Breton Road is destined to become a word-of-mouth classic.

Item came quicker than expected and in new packaging. It was exactly as described.

I love the way the author set this book up. You gradually build on what you learn and never really feel that you are being thrown in to hard. The writing is fantastic. Not to difficult in technological terms for the novice and yet levels with the seasoned veteran just right. When you complete a chapter , you are introduced to a " In the field scenario" service call. You imagine yourself at the call working out the problem in the component. You see how to step by step, use the common sense approach to troubleshooting and gain good skills in those procedures. The calls vary from simple to very complex. One thing is for very certain. You will enjoy having this book in your professional HVAC/R library.

This book cost $108.00 and is full of errors. The instructor of my Intro To Control Class has contacted the publisher but to no avail. I am struggling in a course that I have always wanted to take and although my instructor is fanstastic this book gets a big fat F- from me. This book has failed and I hope that anyone who is forced to pay for this book isn't stuck paying full price. It's just not worth it!

This book was used in my "Fundamentals of Electricity" course in a technical college air-conditioning (AC) program. It was selected because it was the only text specifically for AC. We used the first third of the book. I'm an older student, have two years of university credits, and have seen a lot of technical and vocational training material. This book is simply awful. I have never had to struggle with a textbook so hard as with this one. Grammatical errors were abundant. The review questions were poorly written. Illustrations were occasionally mis-labeled, out of sequence or just plain wrong. Where the material raised a question, it was often left unanswered, but unasked questions were answered in excruciating detail. I had to use 4 other books to fill gaps left by this one. Most insulting was the price: $108. There are better books that cover basic electricity, some aimed at HVAC. I used Proctor & Mazur's books from ATP to fill some gaps. Additionally, ARI's "Refrigeration and Air Conditioning" has a good treatment, which is clearly written.

I ordered this book because as an emerging graphic desginer, I wanted to know how to set my documents up for print in programs like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and of course Quark. Although this book is very detailed about the history of printing and how printing works, as well as job estimates for printing, it seems really outdated as far as using your computer for prepress and helping a designer work with a local printer. And the clencher is, it is basically a school textbook. That is what it looks and reads like, unfortunately. However, if you are an artist in any way and are studying art and printing processes and all the different kinds, you might find it somewhat helpful. For those of you creating a brochure in Quark and need information on color processing, stacking, and how to approach your printer to get the job done? This is not the book. Try "Pocketguide to Digital Printing".

This book takes the reader through the right steps to acheive satisfactory results on a press. The knowledge contained in this book will separate the reader from the growing population of half-baked desktop publishers who cause grief to printers, service bureaus, advertising agencies and the like. It can also save the self-publisher hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars caused by bad design and or process.

"Do me and the printing industry a favor, read it!"