Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A small book about enormous things

Eastbound by Maylis De Kerangal

by Leave a Comment

Aliocha, a Russian conscript, is on a the Trans-Siberian railroad headed to his post. He, you will not be surprised to learn, does not want to go to Siberia. In his efforts to escape, defect, disappear, he meets meets Hélène, a French woman who is also trying to leave Russia. In a mere 137 pages, you witness their inner and outer worlds collide as they become accomplices despite the vast differences in age, language, and experience.  This is a short book — I read it […]

She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

by Leave a Comment

CBR15 Passport Siberia Now mystical and/or spooky circus is one of my favorite vibes, but it is the language of this book that sets it apart for me, ranging from an East End London lilt to wonderfully baroque proclamations a la P. T. Barnum at his most fulsome. The plot is based on a feminist twist of the Leda and the swan myth.  Fevvers, renowned aerialiste, is recounting her origin story in turn of the century London to a young American journalist.  At six two […]

A Truly Heroic Narrative of Human Effort

On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers by Kate Marsden

by 2 Comments

This was a great book to end the year on — compulsively readable, extremely grim, and a triumph to the power of the human spirit. I loved this book and read most of it out loud to my mom as I went, so it would probably make a great audiobook, too. On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers is, as the title describes, a travel narrative of Kate Marsden’s trip from England into the Siberian wilds to visit the lepers there. She was a […]

The Willa Cather of Siberia?

by 2 Comments

Writer Kseniya Melnik moved with her family from Magadan to Alaska when she was 15. In this collection of short stories, she deftly introduces readers, who most likely are unfamiliar with  Siberia — home of the Gulag prison camp system, to the people of the cold and remote city of Magadan in the Russian Northeast. The stories are set in the post-Stalin years, from the 1950s with the Khruschev thaw, through the Brezhnev stagnation and into the age of Glasnost and Perestroika. These are not […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo