CityNews Bookshelf: 22 reads for 2022

It was another page-turning year at the CityNews Bookshelf. Here are the 22 best reads of 2022, as chosen by host and producer John Ackermann.

Pleasant Good Evening – A Memoir. My 30 Wild and Turbulent Years of Sportstalk

His radio show was considered appointment listening among local sports fans for years. In Pleasant Good Evening, Dan Russell provides an elbows-up, not-afraid-to-go-into-the-corners look at his time as host of Canada’s longest-running nightly sports talk show.

• Honourable Mention: Fighter: Defying the NHL Odds by Aaron Volpatti

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture

What is normal?  And how do we define it?  “Trauma and stress are so normal in society that we take them to be almost natural occurrences,” explains Dr. Gabor Maté, author of The Myth of Normal.

• Honourable Mention – All We Want: Building the Life We Can’t Buy by Michael Harris

The Acid Room: The Psychedelic Trials and Tribulations of Hollywood Hospital

“Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Long before that famous phrase was linked to Timothy Leary and the use of LSD for recreational purposes, a little-known facility in New Westminster was supervising acid trips as a form of therapy. Now, that story is being told in the book, The Acid Room.

The Beatle Bandit: A Serial Bank Robber’s Deadly Heist, A Cross-Country Manhunt, and the Insanity Plea That Shook a Nation

Several years before Charles Manson was inspired by the lyrics to “Helter Skelter,” 24-year-old Matthew Kerry Smith put on a Beatle wig and a Halloween mask and robbed a CIBC branch in the Toronto area, killing a man who tried to intervene, earning himself the nickname The Beatle Bandit.

Deep, Dark and Dangerous: The Story of British Columbia’s World-Class Undersea Tech Industry

It’s a little-known saga: how B.C. became a global leader in the underwater tech space. Even though our undersea tech sector dates to the mid-1960s, it remains largely unheralded outside specialist circles. Author Vickie Jensen’s Deep, Dark and Dangerous is bringing light to a part of our world usually shrouded in darkness.

First Nations 101: Tons of Stuff You Need to Know

First Nations 101 aims to educate readers on the history, heritage, and diversity of First Peoples in Canada. It’s also a call to action. “I kind of feel like reconciliation in this country is moving at a snail’s pace,” said author Lynda Gray. She feels while much has happened since the first edition of the book came out, not much has changed.

Never Say P*g: The Book of Sailors’ Superstitions

R. Bruce Macdonald has logged more than 100,000 nautical miles, many of those as the captain and owner of North Star of Herschel Island, an old fur-trading ship that helped maintain Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic during the Cold War. Now, R. Bruce Macdonald is out with Never Say P*g, a book drawing on those many miles at sea.

Holden After & Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose

B.C.’s toxic drug crisis is showing no signs of slowing down. In 2015, a year before the province declared it a public health emergency, 529 people lost their lives to it. Each one of those 529 had a story. Tara McGuire’s Holden After & Before is one of them.

Mount Pleasant Stories: Historical Walking Tours

It may not have the fame of Strathcona, the West End, or Chinatown, but Mount Pleasant Stories author Christine Hagemoen argues Mount Pleasant has just as rich a history as those other neighbourhoods and it’s one worth saving.

Using Power Well: Bob Williams and the Making of British Columbia

From his working-class roots to becoming an alderman, an MLA, then a cabinet minister, and later a top bureaucrat, Bob Williams has led a life of achievements, many of which we now take for granted. Now, at the age of 89, he has finally committed his remarkable story to paper in Using Power Well.

The Rooming House: The West Coast in the Seventies

The Rooming House looks back at Vancouver in its ‘free love’ era when young people lived together in cheap accommodations on the city’s West Side.  And while the graphic novel is a work of fiction, author and illustrator Michael Kluckner anchors this coming-of-age tale very much in the real-life events of the Vietnam/Woodstock/Watergate era.

• Honourable Mention – Noonday Dark: A Doctor Annick Boudreau Mystery #2 by Charles Demers

Invisible Boy: A Memoir of Self-Discovery

Harrison Mooney was born Black but raised in a white, Christian-fundamentalist household, made to downplay his racial identity from a young age. Now, the award-winning Vancouver-based journalist is sharing his coming-of-age story in the powerful book, Invisible Boy.

• Honourable Mention – Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces by Elamin Abdelmahmoud

Black & White: An Intimate, Multicultural Perspective on ‘White Advantage’ and Paths to Change

For many of us, the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a police officer, who is white, represented a reckoning on systemic racism in our society and a desire to learn. It also inspired Toronto’s Stephen Dorsey to pen the book, Black & White.

305 Lost Buildings of Canada

What we ignore today, we may treasure tomorrow. That is the guiding principle of a book about Canada’s lost architectural heritage. 305 Lost Buildings of Canada combines the minimalist monochrome illustrations of Montreal artist Raymond Biesinger with text from Toronto-based writer and Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic.

Solidarity: Canada’s Unknown Revolution of 1983

The year is 1983. U.S. President Ronald Reagan is in the White House, Canada has a Prime Minister named Trudeau — Pierre, not Justin — and British Columbia is on the verge of a general strike. In Solidarity, author David Spaner looks back at this tumultuous time.

Something Within Me: A Personal and Political Memoir

He is best known as the father of the GST and as one of the key negotiators of the original 1988 Canada/U.S. Free Trade Agreement. But Something Within Me shows there was much more to the late Michael Wilson than just his resume.

All Roads Home: A Life on and off the Ice

Bryan Trottier is the most decorated Indigenous professional athlete in history: the winner of seven Stanley Cups — six of those as a player — a nine-time NHL All-Star, who also counts the Calder, the Art Ross, the Hart, the Conn Smythe, and the King Clancy Memorial trophies among his accolades. Now, he is committing that remarkable story to paper in All Roads Home.

The Lost Prime Ministers: Macdonald’s Successors Abbott, Thompson, Bowell, and Tupper

Many know Sir John A. Macdonald as Canada’s first prime minister and Sir Wilfrid Laurier as the first French-Canadian PM. But few can name those between them. Author Michael Hill hopes to change that with The Lost Prime Ministers.

Return to Solitude: More Desolation Sound Adventures with the Cougar Lady, Russell the Hermit, the Spaghetti Bandit, and Others 

Everyone has their happy place, be it a cottage or a cabin, somewhere to escape the daily grind. For author, broadcaster, and musician Grant Lawrence, that place is B.C.’s Desolation Sound. Twelve years after his award-winning memoir Adventures in Solitude, Lawrence is back with the sequel, Return to Solitude.

• Honourable Mention – Dad Bod: Portraits of Pop Culture Papas by Cian Cruise

Heroin: An Illustrated History

Canada is going through the worst epidemic of toxic drug deaths in its history, one that was completely preventable, according to Susan Boyd, author of Heroin: An Illustrated History. The Victoria-based scholar and activist says this crisis is the result of two centuries of failed government policy which she details in this impressive, coffee-table-style book.

• Honourable Mention – Light Up The Night: America’s Overdose Crisis and the Drug Users Fighting for Survival by Travis Lupick

Cold Case BC: The Stories Behind the Province’s Most Intriguing Murder and Missing Person Cases 

Eve Lazarus has long uncovered the stories that are all around us yet are hidden in plain sight. Now, the author, journalist, blogger, and podcaster is back with Cold Case BC, a sequel of sorts to her 2015 book, Cold Case Vancouver. This time, she has cast her net wide to include cases from all over British Columbia.

Incredible Crossings: The History and Art of the Bridges, Tunnels, and Inland Ferries That Connect British Columbia

We use these structures every day – the Arthur Laing, the Alex Fraser, and the Lions Gate — but how much thought do we really give them and how they came to be?  And would we consider them art? These are some of the questions author and historian Derek Hayes tackles in his latest book Incredible Crossings.