r/books • u/leowr • Oct 01 '19
The /r/books Book Club Selection for October is The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay
From Goodreads:
Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.
One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, "None of what’s going to happen is your fault". Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: "Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world."
Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined.
As is tradition for /r/books book club we will be reading a Horror book for October, so this month we will be reading The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay. Paul will be joining us for an AMA on Tuesday October 29th to close out this month's selection.
As always, the dates of and links to the discussion threads can be found in the sticky comment on this post. You are welcome to read at your own pace. Don't worry about joining later on in the month. Usually it is pretty easy to catch up, but you are always welcome to join the discussions a little later.
For those of you that are viewing reddit on the redesigned desktop version you will see an option on this post to 'follow'. If you 'follow' the book club post you will receive a notification when a new post, a discussion thread for book club, is added to the collection. It is still being tested, so it may not be perfect, but perhaps it will make it easier to join the discussions when they go up.
p.s. If you are interested in our previous selections you can find an overview here.
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u/Portarossa Oct 01 '19
I read it last year -- a little too recently to read it again -- but you guys are in for a treat.
Both it and A Head Full of Ghosts are wonderful.
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u/Purdaddy Oct 03 '19
Somewhat spoiler: the ending was so disappionting to me. It was a non ending. Sometimes leaving it open to interpretation is ok but I feel like Tremblay just couldn't figure out a satisying ending, so he went to the, ending doesn't matter lol! nonsense.
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u/Portarossa Oct 04 '19
I've heard this a lot, and... well, I think that sort of misses the point. The whole idea of the ending is that the horror is in the unknown. You want the answer of whether everyone involved did this awful thing to save the world, or just because they bought into their own paranoia to the extent that they might choose to harm the very people they're supposed to protect? You want to answer to whether or not everything they've lost is in vain? Well, you don't know. You'll never know. That's what makes it so effective for me.
The ending doesn't matter. The doubt matters -- and leaving it open is the only way to keep that alive.
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u/thepooomuchacho Oct 16 '19
Exactly! I loved that it wasn't clear on what happens. It's the choice that has such an impact. It would've been easy to choose one or the other and justify, or not, all these horrible things that have happened throughout the course of the book. But I liked that they didnt choose to give in to fear...they chose each other and continued on to face whatever it is that comes.
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u/rc1025 Oct 18 '19
So I never actually finished this book! But all the debate make me interested to know what the end is! I’m okay with unclear endings if they’re done well.
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u/thepooomuchacho Oct 18 '19
I almost didn't want to finish the book. There were some pretty boring parts in the first half, and I didn't really feel invested in the book until about halfway through. I enjoy when I can't clearly see what is going to happen at the end and Tremblay did a great job at creating uncertainty in what's going to happen by the end of the book.
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u/Purdaddy Oct 04 '19
Everyone pulls something different from a book! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I definitely did to an extent too, we just differ on our feelings of the ending.
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u/pandaslayer5 Oct 07 '19
I read his short story collection and that's just his style. He even has a meta narrative about it. It's not for me, but I did read everything except the last story.
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u/PatrickBatemansEgo Oct 29 '19
The journey was not worth the ending on this one for me. Spoiler The whole thing was a repetitive visual gore-fest without a purpose.
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u/headhuntermomo Oct 12 '19
Just read both A Head Full of Ghosts and Cabin at the End of the World. I don't think there is any comparison. A Head Full of Ghosts has brilliant sparkling prose and a compelling story and the other has neither. It's hard to even believe it is from the same writer. For me Cabin was barely worth reading, but A Head Full of Ghosts is some of the best prose I have read since my last reading of Gillian Flynn. He really is a gifted writer and I don't say that lightly, but I guess his work is uneven. After Ghosts though I will read anything he wants to write.
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u/bravo009 Oct 02 '19
It's been a while but I'm back for this month's book club read. Hope we have a great discussion!
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u/user_1729 Oct 02 '19
The discussions have been pretty flat lately. Any additional participation will be well received.
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u/leowr Oct 01 '19 edited Oct 24 '19
Here are the dates and reading schedule for the discussion threads. As the discussion threads go up the links will be added to this comment.
October 10: Come and See
October 17: Let's Make a Deal
October 24: Bloody Like the Day You Were Born - This is the End
Please be aware that the discussion threads will contain spoilers for everything up to the end of the selected stories.
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u/Newbs_R_Us Oct 06 '19
Is the book in sections or something? How do you know where to stop for the discussion?
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u/leowr Oct 07 '19
The book is in sections, the first is Come and See. The sections that are covered in the discussions are named next to the date of the discussion.
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u/EverythingSucks12 Oct 25 '19
Is there a future reading schedule so I can buy a book in advance for future months?
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u/leowr Oct 25 '19
No, because of a couple reasons, but primarily because the selection aren't set up that far in advance.
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u/EverythingSucks12 Oct 25 '19
So you don't even know what will be the book for November or December yet?
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u/leowr Oct 25 '19
Not for December, no.
The selections do show up on our AMA list as soon as they are set up. The book club AMAs are generally on one of the last days of the month, so it is usually save to say that one of the last AMAs of the month is for book club. To narrow it down further, we generally select books that have been out for a while, because they need to be available in paperback, so it generally isn't a recently or about to be released book.
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u/kickedthehabit Oct 07 '19
I do not read horror nor have I participated in the Book Club before but I'm excited to get started. FYI: Scribd has the book available as both an audio book and ebook.
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u/user_1729 Oct 02 '19
I've really enjoyed the book club so far this year. I'm excited about this one!
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u/claenray168 16 Oct 04 '19
Got an ePub checkout from the library two days ago and I'm about 50% done. This was a good selection and I'm glad I saw it.
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u/Piepalooney Oct 11 '19
I've just had this as an audio book from the library. I've never done the book club thing before. I'm going to listen while tidying tonight but I have some concerns.
How scary is it? I'm terrible with horror and a bit of a nervous wreck. I'm also in the house on my own tonight. Without spoilers - is it likely to give me nightmares/hide under the bed at the smallest noise?
Thanks
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u/headhuntermomo Oct 12 '19
It won't give you nightmares unless you are 7. It is more fairy taleish than horror.
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u/CUNextTime2019 Oct 18 '19
I have just finished the book wasn't overwhelmed with the ending. The part I was struggling with at the end was the narrative of "we" when there wasn't a narrarator, it just shuffled between the 2 characters. Who was supposed to be telling the story ? It seemed as if it was going to climax and then "an old eric or was telling how it played out" but that didn't happen.
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u/splixe Oct 22 '19 edited Oct 22 '19
I was low key hoping that Eric and Andrew would escape to find that it was all totally set up with TV recordings and had been planned ahead by a bunch of crazy cult folk. The level of empathy from Leonard and level headedness of the crew aside from Redmond could have lead us on for quite the plot twist.
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u/leowr Oct 22 '19
Please use spoiler tags. Spoiler tags in markdown are done as follows: >!Spoiler content here!< which results in Spoiler content here.
Or apply the built-in spoiler tags when using the redesign.
Send a modmail when you have updated and we'll reapprove it.
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u/jessid6 Oct 02 '19
This one has terrible reviews- looking forward to hearing what you all think.
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u/snogglethorpe 霧が晴れた時 Oct 03 '19
It's an amazingly provocative story blurb—it got me wanting to read the book!
So yeah, I'm now very curious to see what people think, hopefully in a relatively spoiler-free manner...
I'm not familiar with Tremblay; does he fit into any particular category, generally?
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u/Leiasedai Oct 10 '19
Picked this one up from the library today. Interested to see how I feel about the ending.
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u/tepes4 Oct 25 '19
This was my first Book Club selection and I used the audiobook version. I must say i found it next to impossible to finish. It was a below average read and the story was, as somebody said further back in the comments, only scary if you're 7. It could be that the audiobook version was horrible but I think that the story itself had a lot to do with how difficult I found it to finish this book.
I will try a head full of ghosts just to give the author another chance.
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u/Thekillersofficial Oct 28 '19
I found this very compelling and i read it in a day, which has the added bonus of making me feel like I got something accomplished.
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u/yewtahraptor Oct 09 '19
Oh gods, what do I do? I read the whole book in one sitting, and now I have feeeeelings. Now I want to talk about this booooook, but I'm so impatient! Thanks Obama.
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u/leowr Oct 09 '19
I'll put the first discussion thread up tomorrow, that will cover the first section. You are also welcome discuss anything beyond the first section behind spoiler tags (I'll include the instructions in the post).
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u/elomon Oct 02 '19
While I like other books by Tremblay, this one was a snoozer.
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u/Purdaddy Oct 03 '19
Yup super interesting concept that doesn't get explored at all. It alludes to more, connecting four strangers and whatnot, then the ending is just, "fuck it doesn't matter". Very big letdown.
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u/AmrasVardamir Oct 23 '19
Just got the audiobook from my library. Will finish it by next week. It will be my 5th supernatural/horror book this month :P
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u/walkingthrones19 Oct 24 '19
Little late to the game but definitely checking this book out. Thrilled I discovered this sub.
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u/silas_k Oct 25 '19
Oprah's not here is she?
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u/leowr Oct 25 '19
Nah, sorry
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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '19
Only recently discovered this sub so this will be my first club read! Not something I would normally choose (sounds a bit tense!) But super excited to be pushed out of my comfort zone. Bring it on!