Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Wedding belle

Once Upon a Wedding by Nancy Millar

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Last year I read a graveyard themed Nancy Millar history book (Remember Me as I Pass By) and this year I turned to something lighter, a book about weddings in western Canada. Like Remember Me, Once Upon a Wedding is armchair-light history, a brief romp back through western Canadian weddings from the 1800s through to the 1940s. Millar’s eye is drawn to newspaper announcements of weddings, old family photos and heirloom wedding dresses, and I once again did a lot of googling to see if […]

Book So Nice, He Named It Thrice

New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation by Thomas Dyja

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I’ve waited a long time for a book like this. I’ve always wanted to know how New York City became NEW YORK CITY! in its modern day form. How it “came back” from its struggling 70s and who benefitted versus who got left behind. I was hoping for something in scope that could synthesize politics with culture. Thomas Dyja does that and so much more in a delightfully readable, single volume. Dense but easy to engage with, this book starts from the beginning of the […]

Poets, politicians and pilots- a journey through local history

Remember me as you pass by by Nancy Millar

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Sam McGee was from Tennessee but despite what Robert Service’s famous poem would have you believe, he wasn’t cremated in the Yukon- he’s actually buried in the small town of Beiseker, Alberta, just east of Calgary. How McGee went from goldrush poet’s muse to a dusty prairie graveyard is one of many life stories that Miller touches on her interesting and informative journey through Alberta’s history via its graveyards- her stated intent is to tell stories backward, starting with gravestones she found interesting. Although this […]



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