Reddit reviews The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

I always recommend starting with the Penguin Classics collection The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, which is a handsome, accessible edition of his best short fiction. My favorites are "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Rats in the Walls," and "The Color From Out of Space."

First, I don't really recommend mass market paperbacks, get a trade if you can, they're much more comfortable to read. The collections published by Del Rey are really good, and you can know you have some continuity (and aren't buying the same stories) because all the covers are works of either HR Geiger or the Polish (or Hungarian?) surrealist whose name escapes me. I can't remember if these are only HP Lovecraft or if they also include Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, and his other contemporaries. Purists detest Derleth because he took the Mythos in his own direction, but his stories are still very good, very different from Lovecraft (which is refreshing when it comes to his proteges and colleagues), and without his work none of Lovecraft's stories would've survived into today--he founded Arkham House dedicated to publishing all Cthulhu Mythos stories.

The Penguin Classics collections are really nice as well.

An individual book that I cannot recommend more is this one. It is a Barnes & Noble collection of Lovecraft's Dream Cycle stories, they are much longer (novella-length), very involved, and have a whole mythology unto their own. The scenery and Lovecraft's descriptions of the dreamlands and Antarctic wastes are so engrossing, haunting, and yet beautiful, it is difficult to put down. I have read very few stories with such intensely vivid imagery, and his dream cycle stories do not disappoint.

As a fellow Lovecraft fanboy, welcome to a literary world that will consume you. If you are interested, one of my firsts forays into Lovecraftian literature was The Colour Out of Space, which somehow made me physically ill while I read it one morning as a young kid (I was probably 14 at the time, spending a summer with my dad and I was regularly up till 4 or 5 am reading Lovecraft's stories and playing the wonderful MUD over telnet).

Here is a link to an online collection of Lovecraft's work. I, too, prefer books to reading online, so I completely understand.

The 3 Penguin classics are great because they've got annotations from S.T. Joshi and also have the corrected text by him. They're also cheap. Since they aren't huge volumes they are also easy to read and carry.

http://www.amazon.ca/Call-Cthulhu-Other-Weird-Stories/dp/0141182342/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1335790731&sr=8-7

http://www.amazon.ca/Penguin-Classics-Dreams-Witch-Stories/dp/0142437956/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1335790731&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.ca/Thing-Doorstep-Other-Weird-Stories/dp/0142180033/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1335790731&sr=8-9

The Necronomicon (listed in the comments below) is nice as well, but it lacks footnotes and has errors. Also nice is the companion to this - Eldritch Tales which has some stuff the Necronomicon doesn't.

http://www.amazon.ca/Eldritch-Tales-H-P-Lovecraft/dp/0575099356/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335790861&sr=1-1


The Barnes and Noble edition seems like a good buy.

I recommend having a look at this page over at hplovecraft.com. It has a good overview of the various sources you can choose from.

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/sources/

The Arkham house editions seem like the definitive ones, however they are a bit harder to come by than some of the others.

Well, my favorites are

The Moviegoer

The Road

A Confederacy of Dunces

Rendezvous with Rama

Watchmen

Snow Crash

Slaughterhouse-Five

Cat's Cradle

The Big Sleep

The Maltese Falcon

American Gods

A Clockwork Orange

Preacher

Fahrenheit 451

1984

Akira

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Lolita

Love in the Time of Cholera

Naked Lunch

Animal Farm

The Sandman

At the Mountains of Madness

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Brave New World

We

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

I actually think The Call of Cthulhu is the worst introduction to his works. It's actually pretty boring and rambly without context.

I think The Shadow Over Innsmouth is probably the best place to start. It's easy to be interested in even if you're not already a Lovecraft fan. Shadow is what got my wife completely enthralled with Lovecraft but The Call of Cthulhu still bores her to tears as a narrative.

I think The Dunwich Horror is also pretty good, but it peaks early and goes downhill. This is one of the biggest showings of the Necronomicon in Lovecraft's works.

I think At the Moutains of Madness should be read later once you have a better grasp of the mythos. It's slow to pick up and is almost too broad to grasp without understanding HP Lovecraft's universe.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is pretty good as a stand alone, but it quite long and dry, but the build up leads to a pretty decent pay off.

I think The Colour Out of Space isn't a bad starting place either, though it's mostly separated from the general mythos, but still a very fun read.

The Statement of Randolph Carter is a great short piece dripping with atmosphere in the earlier Lovecraft style where he leaves almost too much to the imagination, but it really works with this story.

The Outsider is another great short with an introspective angle.

The Whisperer in the Darkness is another great option for interesting stuff within the main mythos.

If you want to read these online you can find virtually all of Lovecraft's works here as most of them of public domain.

If you want to read them in paperback I would suggest The Penguin Classic versions (2 3). They have light annotations by S. T. Joshi which are great for getting a better context, but not as overkill as some of the more extremely deep annotated versions.

He's mostly known for his short stories, so just look for a short story anthology. Amazon has quite a few to choose from. This one looks promising.

"The Complete Fiction" has all the fiction Lovecraft wrote in his lifetime, minus the commissioned works and collaborations with other writers. Also, the texts are edited by S.T. Joshi, who's the foremost Lovecraft scholar. "The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft" has some analysis for some of his works, but I don't know about the editing of the text. I own this one, which I'm pretty sure has the same contents as the Knickerbocker Classics edition.

If you want annotations AND complete texts, Penguin Classics' three paperback collections are a good choice, because the texts are those edited by Joshi, plus they have a ton of annotations for basically every bit of extra info regarding the particular story, influential element, etc... Yes, they are softcover books, but the good side is they have annotations. Here they are:

• The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
  
• The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories
  
• The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories
  
  "The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories" also has a special edition with Cthulhu with a monocle, mustache and tuxedo on the front cover.
  
  I share the opinion of /u/leafyhouse, who says "Buy The Complete Fiction" first. You can read all of his official stories in a chronological order and see how he grew up as a writer. Later you can check out Penguin Classics or The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft and sink deep in what influenced Lovecraft to write all this gorgeous work.
  
  EDIT: Forgot to put links to the Penguin Classics collections.
  
  EDIT número dos: In this other thread, /u/IndispensableNobody points out the differences between the Knickerbocker Classics "Complete Fiction" and the Barnes & Noble one. Check it out.

poe was one of lovecraft's heroes as well. if you enjoy the stories in that book, i highly recommend picking up an anthology edited by S.T. Joshi, who's pretty much the most expert authority on lovecraft in the world. joshi's research and notes at the end add a whole new dimension to the stories

also, awesome knives and bead! you have good taste

love the maliwan mousepad too

Not really, going through every short story and novella he has ever written takes way less than, say, reading a single book of A Song of Ice and Fire.

EDIT: you might want to start here

This is an awesome collection for a pretty good price if you want to check it out.

Colour out of Space by Lovecraft

In fact this entire collection: http://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Stories-Penguin-Twentieth-Century-Classics/dp/0141182342 is fantastic.

Maybe some Edgar Allan Poe? Start out short with some of his stories. You'd probably like The Cask of Amontillado, it's awesome.

And then there's always The Shining

Penguin put out a series of three books that pretty much contains everything. They're probably the best and most affordable collections of Lovecraft.
http://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Stories-Penguin-Twentieth-Century-Classics/dp/0141182342
http://www.amazon.com/Thing-Doorstep-Stories-Penguin-Classics/dp/0142180033
http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-Witch-House-Stories-Classics/dp/0142437956

Your bard found a book and upon reading it aloud cast a dimension-spanning spell that imparted Great Old One powers on them.

Cthulhu cares not for your actions. You only work to benefit him, though you don't know how or when or why, you just keep warlocking.

I would suggest getting into some Lovecraft stories and see what you think about them. HP Lovecraft is usually called the father of modern horror, and for good reason when you read through some of his more famous (and some of his less famous) stories.

I'd say the easiest collection to start with is The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin 20th Century Classics)
Here's a link for it

If you like that then it's fairly easy to get into his other works, but be aware he is a bit long-winded.

The best books in my opinion are the 3 Penguin Classics editions with his major works in their corrected state and explanatory notes by S.T. Joshi (the foremost scholar of Lovecraft).

Another option with corrected texts and all of his fiction (excluding revisions and collaborations) is the Barnes and Noble edition: The Complete Fiction (make sure it's the corrected 2nd edition which you can see by its purple ribbon marker and silver gilt on the edges) .

edit: There are also a lot of his stories that are in the Free Domain and you can read some of them here and this site has also a bibliography which you can consult when you ask yourself which edition(s) you should purchase.

Start with this good collection of short stories.

At the Mountains of Madness is my favourite, but it's a longer text and it might not be the place to start, you'd better get used to his style with shorter stories first. Personally I really liked The Colour out of Space. The first book I bought was this one.

Dagon (Short Story), The Whisperer in Darkness (Short Story), The Shadow over Innsmouth (Novella), The Colour Out of Space (Short Story), and The Rats in the Walls (Short Story).


I have all of these in The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories.

Are you interested in horror and short fiction at all? If yes, then Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft. One of my absolute favourite horror authors, and a great short story. Here's a link to Amazon.

Personally I like the Penguin Classics set. The price is right and they're annotated by Joshi. Going with a big hardcover might be... unwieldy.