Need HP Lovecraft Suggestions (1 Viewer)

[StephenK]

Ok folks,

I know there's a few Lovecraft fans out there....

I'm trying to read Lovecraft and need a good place to start.

Would it be best to read them in the order they were written, or is there a better way?

Thanks

Steve

 

[Holadem]

Timing how long it would take for Julie to show up...
--
Holadem - she is busy dissecting some kids

 

[Jack Briggs]

I would start with The Colour Out of Space. But JulieK is the resident Lovecraft expert here. She'll see this thread soon enough.

Did you know there was a band in the late '60s called H.P. Lovecraft? A psychedelic "art rock" outfit from the West Coast. I bought the band's one and only album, self-titled. It freaked my friends out.

 

[Max Knight]

I've always been a big fan of "The Haunter in the Dark".

[edited to reflect ACTUAL title!]

 

[Julie K]

Sorry I'm late. Just cleaning up after a BBQ...

If you're just getting started, I'd recommend the Del Ray trade paperback "Best of HP Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre." You can't go wrong with any of the tales in this book. Del Ray also published two other books "Dreams of Terror and Death" and "The Road to Madness". "Dreams of Terror and Death" contains most of Lovecraft's dream cycle tales (which are quite different than his Cthulhu tales - my preference is for the latter, but YMMV) but it does also contain 'At the Mountains of Madness' which is a must-read.
If you get hooked, I'd suggest picking up the Arkham hardcovers (www.arkhamhouse.com) including Lovecraft's "revision" work - "The Horror in the Museum and Others". Most stories he rewrote completely but were published under other names.
Here's a list of what I'd call "must-reads":
The Whisperer in the Darkness (this one is probably all you need to get hooked )
The Colour Out of Space
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Dunwich Horror
The Call of Cthulhu
At the Mountains of Madness
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Haunter in the Dark
The Thing on the Doorstep
Pickman's Model
The Dream's in the Witch-House
Shadow Out of Time
Just to get you started

 

[Steve Christou]

Stephen this link should be very useful, this site has detailed info on all of Lovecrafts work, check it out.
http://www.hplovecraft.com/
If you like Lovecraft than I highly recommend William Hope Hodgeson's "The House on the Borderland" (1908) one of the greatest horror novels ever, scared the hell out of me when I first read it many years ago.
Also carrying on in the tradition of Lovecraft is Brian Lumley's many horror novels and stories some of which include the unspeakable Cthulhu.

 

[Julie K]

I've always been a big fan of "The Lurker in the Dark"

There's "The Lurking Fear" (very good) and "Haunter in the Dark" (also very good). However, I must say to stay away from "The Lurker at the Threshold" or "The Watchers Out of Time". These books may say Lovecraft on the cover, but they were really written by August Derleth. There is a petition going on to try to get the publisher to remove Lovecraft's name from these books. Derleth introduced an element of good and evil that was completely absent in Lovecraft's mythos.

 

[Julie K]

I'll also say if you get really hooked on Lovecraft, you'll probably require a regular feeding for your fix. No one writes 'em like HPL did, but you can feed your addiction with:

New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

Cthulhu 2000

Shadows Over Innsmouth

Acolytes of Cthulhu

Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos

The New Lovecraft Circle

I'll also suggest a CD that can be found on ebay (quite reasonably for $15) called "Mythos HP Lovecraft Cthulhu Nightmares". It's sort of a horror/musical/re-telling of the highlights of the Cthulhu mythos stories. It's quite good.

 

[StephenK]

Thread printing now, heading over to Barnes & Nobles.
Thanks all, (especially Julie) Hope Soul & Sanity remain after I'm done
Steve

 

[Van Patton]

That HPLovecraft.com has some online books available. I just read the first chapter of Call of the Chutlu

 

[Julie K]

Yes, there are some works available online, but it's much better to be able to hold your own sanity-threatening tome.
Good luck Stephen, may you find enjoyment in the unspeakable. But remember: they don't want just your soul, they want the meaty bits too.

 

[Holadem]

Do think a Stephen King fanatic would enjoy these?

--

Holadem

 

[Julie K]

I don't know Holadem - try some HPL and find out
Here's an online version of The Whisperer in Darkness. If you like this, you'll like the rest of Lovecraft. If not, then you probably won't like the rest of his work.
In honesty I must point out that as a Lovecraft fanatic, I don't really enjoy King. But hopefully you can enjoy both.

 

[StephenK]

Julie, thanks again, one more question, are the longer works "self contained" or do you need to establish the background in a certain order.

Holadem, I too am a King fanatic but I've been told it's much closer to a Clive Barker sensability, especially the books of blood stuff. Julie would you agree?

Steve

 

[Max Knight]

Ah yes, the dyslexia beast strikes again! I had meant to say "The Haunter in the Dark". I did enjoy "The Lurking Fear" very much as well!

 

[LarryDavenport]

Jack, there are more than one H. P. Lovecraft (the band) albums. They had 3 studio albums and one live album. Their first album (with Whit Ship) is on a two-fer CD with their second album and a live show from the Fillmore West in 1968 is also available and well worth seeking out. Their third studio LP (on Reprise) is out of print.

 

[Julie K]

Holadem, I too am a King fanatic but I've been told it's much closer to a Clive Barker sensability, especially the books of blood stuff. Julie would you agree?

Actually, not having read Barker I can't say
Lovecraft's style is not liked by everyone, but I'll definitely recommend that everyone should read at least one or two of his stories - Whisperer in Darkness, Haunter in the Dark, Colour Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, Shadow Over Innsmouth are some to choose from. If you like these, then it's only a short time until you're hunting down those OOP and expensive Selected Letters

 

[Julie K]

Speaking of CDs, in another thread I mentioned a band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. (The name is from a passage from "The Tomb" by HPL.) They currently have available a limited number of the "Let Sleeping Gods Lie" CD. It's a whole CD of Lovecraft inspired songs. It's pretty much a "must-own" for Lovecraft fans. "I'm goin' down to Dunwich, where the town is sleepy and the people are creepy"

 

[Jack Briggs]

Larry: Thanks for the info! I would like to check those other albums out. Don't know why (or how) I lost track of that band. Must have been my then infatuation with Jefferson Airplane. JB

 

[Mark Lee]

I've hacked my way through quite a few of Lovecraft's works over the years -- I say "hacked" because it often requires the mental equivalent of a machete to wade through his oftentimes mile-thick layers of adjectives/adverbs/other descriptors in every sentence. The aforementioned volume "Best of H.P. Lovecraft" is indeed a very good introduction to his work -- nearly all of his best-known stories, from "The Call of Cthulhu" to "The Colour Out Of Space," are contained within -- and the lead-off work, "The Rats In The Walls," may remind King fans of the latter's own homage work, "Jerusalem's Lot."
As Julie K mentioned, though, his rather baroque writing is definitely not for everyone. I found it verging on the silly at times (how does starlight "hideously wink" at you, I wonder?), and his often poorly-hidden racism manages to poke through in various points of his stories (notwithstanding his post-mortem apologist August Derleth's claims to the contrary), which is disappointing, since it often distracts from the point of the story.