Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Paul Tremblay is a weird dude but I’m here for it!

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

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You know those over-sized costume masks that look like a baby’s head? Like what Hazel and Cha Cha wear in Umbrella Academy. This story is the literary equivalent to one of those masks. You’re looking at something that should seem sweet and innocent but instead it makes you feel nervous and afraid. “No matter how bleak or dire, end-of-the-world scenarios appeal to us because we take meaning from the end… there’s also undeniable allure to witnessing the beginning of the end and perishing alone with everyone […]

Timing is everything in ‘The Cabin at the End of the World’

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

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Not long ago, I became a mother . It’s been a roller-coaster ride of sleepless nights, sore nips, and a crippling love that is entirely alien. Sure, I love my husband. I love my corgi. But the love for that squishy little person is something else… something animalistic. I firmly believe that if I’d read The Cabin at the End of the World before entering the dizzying world of parenthood, I would have enjoyed it briefly and moved on. It is a page-turner with sufficient […]

“Nothing good happens in the middle of the night, right?”

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Elizabeth receives a call late one night, and it’s the worst news she can imagine. Her son, Tommy, has vanished into the local woods without a trace after spending the day at his usual hangout, a large split boulder deep in the woods that the boys have been calling Devil’s Rock. The friends he was with seem to be hiding something and there are no other leads on where he might have gone. As the official investigation into his disappearance stalls, Elizabeth begins to see […]

Still waiting for another Tremblay as good as A Head Full of Ghosts

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Okay, we all agreed that A Head Full of Ghosts rocked, right? I’ve read a few other novels by Tremblay since, and while none of them has really come close to the mindf*** that was A Head Full of Ghosts, this one came the closest. Also, as a PSA: If you liked (is liked the right word?) The Library at Mount Char but haven’t read A Head Full of Ghosts, you should rectify that immediately. But don’t rush out to get this one. Tommy and his two best friends […]

The Hot Mess We All Want to See

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“How can ghosts be in your head?” my four-year-old asked me one day. I had been talking to my husband about this book, and my son overheard me. “Uhhh…” I began. How do you explain something like that to a kid? I tried my best with a preschool explanation of this book’s title, all the while realizing that for many people, the topics in this book are not abstract at all, but disturbingly real. While not a ghost story, this book is frightening. Told from […]

Kept me awake!

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No Sleep Till Wonderland, Paul Tremblay’s follow up to The Little Sleep, definitely improved upon the first. Once again, we follow our narcoleptic narrator — P.I. Mark Genevich — as he stumbles around Boston, trying to solve a crime. “I swoon into a standing eight count. Goddamn, I actually feel my consciousness want to detach and hide like a turtle retreating into a hopelessly soft shell that won’t save anyone.” In this novel, Mark has already pretty much blown through any goodwill that the public extended him […]



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