Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Oh Lord, give us the strength to survive the weariness of our lives.”

Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich

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I love oral histories. I’ll read them on any subject, even one I have no interest in. There’s just something about them that fascinates me. I love to hear all the different perspectives on the same topic. I’ve read sad oral histories before, but I’ve never read anything like Voices from Chernobyl. Voice from Chernobyl is hands down the saddest book I’ve ever read. “Sad” isn’t even the word. The grief flies right off the page and envelops you. It’s also incredibly moving and downright poetic. […]

The Fallout

Chernobyl Prayer by Svetlana Alexievich

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In April 1986, a series of explosions occurred in the nuclear reactor of Chernobyl in the Ukraine. Consisting of stories told by firemen, clean-up workers, soldiers, scientists, widows, orphans, residents, and evacuees, this book is not concerned with the event itself, but the aftermath, especially in the author’s home country of Belarus which was heavily impacted by the fallout. This has to be one of the most horrifying and depressing, but at the same time impressive and touching books I have ever read. There are […]

June 1941… I remember it.

Last Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich

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This is collage book (kind of, maybe) from the Belorussian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich. This is the first of her works I’ve read, but I think it’s more or less representative of the kinds of work she does across different subject fields. In this book, she is collecting and editing small scenes of witness of WWII (The Great Patriotic War) by adults in the middle age, remembering their experiences from when they were children. The main range of these pieces are 1-3 pages, but there’s […]



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