Simple solution: swipe up on the carousel to make the cards full-screen, then browse. The whole UI works on this paradigm, so it may not be obvious at first, but it will be if this style of app continues.
Swiping near the bottom with my thumb hasn't bothered me so far, but the text is quite hard to read at that small of a size. I would also like to those cards a bit larger in the future.
cards seem to work better as implemented by google -- cards don't really have as much in common between cards.. they're one-offs. a newsfeed is a long story board, such as it is.