H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Collection

And at a phenomenal price! I am a huge Lovecraft fan. I like the more horror oriented stories but even the fantasy stories enthrall me just for his sheer writing skill. I even like his poems and that is saying a lot because most poems bore me to tears. I also loved the essays. I'm not sure if he wrote more but I particularly loved 'Cat vs. Dog' because it was so funny and so true! Also, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature' was excellent. And even better since most of the titles that I hadn't heard of before are available here, more of them than I would have thought to find at any rate. I also loved the essay on writing weird fiction. I found it to have a lot of helpful and still very valid insights. I find the collaborative works a bit more uneven than the ones purely his own but still very good. The audio links were a bit of a disappointment though. I could not open them on my reader (the Kindle Keyboard) and had to download them to the Kindle for PC on my desktop. That really bummed me out because I was looking forward to curling up with some if I was too tired to read. As far as their quality goes I have no real complaints. I enjoy the straight up readings (I don't know who does them but the readings are good and they have an old-fashioned quality to them that makes them seem very authentic). I was very glad they didn't go for the modern-day crispness and instead they are a little crackly like a radio broadcast, it makes you feel as though you were listening to recordings from the actual people telling the stories. I don't usually like audio versions and don't generally listen to books so it surprised me that I liked them. I didn't enjoy the 'radio drama' ones as much though. Mostly because the voices weren't as good as the readings. As I said before, one of the things I love most about Lovecraft is his unique style and craft with words and to hear them degenerated into a radio play just left me cold. Others may like them though. They also weren't in any real order so a bit of searching was required to find what I was looking for. The only other flaw I found, and this was a technical issue with the book itself, was that the story 'Quest of Iranon' was just titled Iranon and the chapter heading was not at the beginning of the story where it should have been. The other one was 'The Transition of Juan Romero'. It was entitled 'Quest of Iranon' for some reason. The publisher could probably fix that in an update though and it definitely does not detract from the book as a whole. When I get jaded with modern stories and their sometimes liberal use of words, grammar and spelling I love turning to the classics and re-reading books by those who know what a word is, how it should be used and more importantly, how it is spelled.

This is a difficult review to write on a number of fronts. First, if you're a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, this purchase is a no-brainer. Buy. Buy directly. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. For the price, you simply cannot get a better deal.On the other hand...you kind of get what you pay for, too. I feel bad complaining at all because, well - look at the price! But, in a review, one is duty bound to point out the deficiencies:One of the biggest selling points is the audio book links. These files are all MP3s, which - depending on your device - may not sort, bookmark, pause, resume, or generally behave as expected (i.e., like audio books, rather than "songs"). If you're willing to invest the effort and are technically proficient, you can do the work to convert them to more suitable formats yourself.More difficult to overcome is the quality of some of the readings, which vary from pretty good to dreadful. Some are adaptations, essentially radio plays, rather than direct readings of the original texts. Others sound like they were read by enthusiastic amateurs. Dedicated,to be certain, and doing the best they can, to be sure, but amateurs nonetheless - and not exactly with the best of equipment or environs.But this feels like I'm nitpicking. I feel a little guilty complaining because - darn! - look at the price!So it's best to think of the audio files as an added bonus, a little something extra in an already amazing value, rather than a main attraction.As for the works themselves, well...H.P. Lovecraft has been called the best (or most famous) bad American writer. There is little serious dispute about his often clunky, sometimes hilariously awful and overwrought prose (he never met an adverb or adjective he didn't like, and would often fearlessly invent new ones), but for those of us who feel deep affection for his stories, this is part of their charm. I count myself among those who fall under the spell of his pulpy, purple prose and - for me, at least - it never fails to weave a spell. Detractors say his stories are not even scary, but I beg to differ: there is such enthusiasm and drive within that I find myself carried along every time, with a curious mixture of anticipation and dread for even the oddest of his inventions.You see, the man simply LOVED to tell a twisted tale. And this - this hard-to-define quality of relish in the telling - is what defines his work. For all of Lovecraft's shortcomings as a writer, he was a very effective storyteller. However clumsy his steps along the path, he always did his best to lead the reader through dark country, on a thrilling journey of discovery to some blasphemous evil of indescribably putrescent, evilly glowing, fetid, living ichor of transcendent madness inducing, nauseous tansdimensional writhing hellishness. Or something.Anyway, fans know who they are, and they know what they should do...buy it!

Anyone who hasn't heard of Lovecraft has either heard of the average story of C'thulhu or nothing at all. Whilst this is a most abominable fact, it really shews how much distaste there is for any deeper search for what can essentially be described as a cultural phenomenon. For example, HG Wells is credited for conceptualising the tank, alongside a plethora of delectable social commentaries which is honestly sometimes even more entertaining than his science fiction, which serves as a front for his political views (awesome btw). Lovecraft is the same way, where everyone who's heard of him remembers him for either C'thulhu, The Shadow over Innsmouth, or maybe even the Dunwich Horror (if some of those people are cool); this collection goes against the paradigm of such reductionist thought, and reveals how awesome he is of a writer, and not just for those three titles, but in his entire philosophy to begin with. Lovecraft plays the card of "horrors beyond our comprehension" via the most comparable means conceivable: the deepest, darkest, and most desolating swathes of the ocean, and the furthest corners of a galaxy, both of which we can only speculate about their unfathomable and unexplored regions, and "what lurks" within the cosmic and terrestrial seas. I wouldn't say he's the *best* writer, but he certainly is a genius incontestably.

Un buen clásico a tener.

It is in the english of the time, which I enjoyed. He was a great horror storyteller.

Der vielleicht größte Horrorschriftsteller der Geschichte!

Come on it's the Don of the unseen horror chuthuluso many contempory writers take inspiration from HP that if you want to really understand horror you really have to read the original...plus bragging rights are off the charts for lovecraft

Gut