Books read in 2013: No. 35 -- The Best of H.P. Lovecraft

by H.P. Lovecraft

Started: July 3
Finished: August 2

Notes: This is a collection of Lovecraft's tales, and I believe at one time or another I have read all of these. But it's been a long while since I've perused the pages of Cthulu's master, and I thought it time I check some of them out once more.

Mini review: It's funny how something you read at one point in your life seems quite different to you at another point. I read a fair amount of Lovecraft in my teens and twenties, and I enjoyed it. Now in my forties, I've read this collection of Lovecraft and was mostly bored, bored, bored. The man had solid plots and could pen some quality creepiness, but he also had overly long, boring prose, in my opinion. Every story I read here, I kept thinking, "Man, this could easily be a fourth the length it is." And characters? They're all kind of the same character, with only some minor background differences between them. So, I'm not likely to be visiting Lovecraft again soon. Of the stories presented here, my favorites were "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Shadow Out of Time." "The Shadow Out of Time" was the most ingenious of all these tales, touching upon Lovecraft's typical creepiness while also being quite unique to the rest of the stories presented here. My complaints aside, Lovecraft was writing in a different era for a different type of reader than myself, so many of the things I found familiar and/or boring would have been new and exciting for his readers.