Which are better?

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Ningauble

[One of my latest reading projects is reading all of HPL's fiction, essays, and poems in chronological order. It's a huge undertaking, so I've barely scratched the surface; there are close to 1000 items on my list...]

Uh-oh... another one! Add "letters" to the list, and that's what I've been working on for some time... jotting down thoughts (or sometimes full-blown essays) as I go along, from varying perspectives. It's tremendously enjoyable, and allows me to see all sorts of connections I'd not caught before... but oh, my! What a lot of reading!!!!

[Nesacat]

Have fun Ningauble ... that's a massive undertaking and I am sure an enjoyable one.

Ummm JD ... have you not already been doing this for some time ... the reading and writing ... "nudge" *poke* *nag*

Having just finished reading the Horror in the Museum ... I can second what JD says. There's some amazing stories in there and there's some that make you want to run out in the street and kill someone. How Lovecraft managed to not commit murder I do not know; the man must have had more than the patience of a saint. But there are some very lovely gems in there indeed.

[iansales]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

De nada, Ian. I've got to admit, I'm very curious about what your take on HPL will be after that... Don't know whether to gird on my armor for the blast, or make extra room at the debating table....

I read a few bits and pieces of Lovecraft before. I remember one drunken reading with some friends of the story with killer penguins and the invisible room (might have been two stories I've conflated into one). We were running out of booze that night, so mixed everything we had left together and christened it "Blasphemous Ichor" in HPL's honour :-)

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by iansales

I read a few bits and pieces of Lovecraft before. I remember one drunken reading with some friends of the story with killer penguins and the invisible room (might have been two stories I've conflated into one). We were running out of booze that night, so mixed everything we had left together and christened it "Blasphemous Ichor" in HPL's honour :-)

Oh, my, what a hangover that must have produced.... And, considering Lovecraft was not only a teetotaller, but a supporter of Prohibition (at least, until it finally became convinced that it wasn't going to work, and even then he supported it in theory), I'd love to have seen his reaction to this one.....

Hmmm... the penguins (though not killer ones) came from At the Mountains of Madness; an invisible room... possibly the invisible maze from "In the Walls of Eryx"?

At any rate... Hope you enjoy. Just a warning, though: read Lovecraft carefully. As was said a long time ago, "Lovecraft does not write for lazy readers"... or hasty readings. That, from talking to various people who don't like his work, is usually what turns out to be the problem: they're used to writers who were much less dense textually and required less thought on the part of the reader, and so all they saw was the denseness, not the fact that that denseness is a very carefully crafted tool for achieving a specific (and often very subtle) set of artistic goals. While he may seem to have pulled out all the stops and gone for various shades of purple at times, a closer reading proves that (save when -- as with "The Hound" or "Herbert West -- Reanimator" or "The Lurking Fear" -- he's being self-parodic) for what he's attempting to do, he's actually quite controlled and restrained.....

[Nesacat]

Goodness ... had me worried for a while there. Killer penguins indeed. The Old Gent would have had quite a lot to say about this indeed Iansales.

Having said that ... I have read Lovecraft while 'under the influence' as it were and not just alcohol and it made the tales so much more vivid. His tales do lend themselves to such conditions even if he himself did not indulge.

[sanityassassin]

Just to throw something else into the mix I just picked up a copy of wordsworth editions collected stories they come in 2 volumes the first with supposedly some of his best sories and the second the one I picked up is a collection of the stuff he did with other people, like rewrites, ghost writing and collaborations called the Loved Dead it contains 19 stories including a serial ghost-written for Harry Houdini. I have only read a couple of stories so far and they seem to be a little hit and miss

[BeerClark]

Originally Posted by Ningauble;1035462
Curiously enough this makes it the only Del Rey edition of Lovecraft worth its price, as the others have the exact same problems as the Voyager editions. I should point out that the Del Rey editions of [I

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos[/i] and Cthulhu 2000, originally published by Arkham House, are also reliable, but these are anthologies not Lovecraft collections....

.

I hope you don't have the same bad opinion of "Bloodcurdling Tales.."
and "The Road to Madness"
Since those are the only books I've read so far!

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by BeerClark

I hope you don't have the same bad opinion of "Bloodcurdling Tales.."
and "The Road to Madness"
Since those are the only books I've read so far!

Well, Pyan, yes, those are textually corrupt, too; especially "The Colour Out of Space" in Bloodcurdling Tales, which is missing about a half-page of text, as I recall....

However, as I discovered HPL in older, corrupt editions, all this has meant to me is that I've found his work richer via the later editions than I did at first... which is much better than the other way 'round....

[pyan]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Well, Pyan, yes, those are textually corrupt, too; especially "The Colour Out of Space" in Bloodcurdling Tales, which is missing about a half-page of text, as I recall.....

Err...thanks for the reply, jd....shall I ask the question now?

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by pyan

Err...thanks for the reply, jd....shall I ask the question now?

LOL. I'll have to dig out my copy and compare to find exactly what's missing....

[pyan]

As long as you don't mix me up with BeerClark again....

Regards,

PYAN

[BeerClark]

Originally Posted by pyan

As long as you don't mix me up with BeerClark again....

Regards,

PYAN

LOL... you should be so lucky!

I find the tough thing about reading Lovecraft (as so many have mentioned before!) is that there are no 'complete' sets. I've gotten a list of all his works and have been checking off read stories just so I don't end up buying a book with mostly stories I've already read! Though I'm sure it will happen sooner or later.

Unfortunately, my County Library (which seems extensive) has very little in the way of Lovecraft.

[ghyle]

BeerClark,

have you looked into interlibrary loan of Lovecraft books? You may be able to get hold of the books you need that way.

[j. d. worthington]

It's called being distracted, Pyan and BeerClark... I've already copped to senility, so I'll try this excuse for a while....

My apologies, folks....

*mumble, mumble, mumble as he goes off to get some new glasses*

[Ningauble]

Originally Posted by BeerClark

I find the tough thing about reading Lovecraft (as so many have mentioned before!) is that there are no 'complete' sets. I've gotten a list of all his works and have been checking off read stories just so I don't end up buying a book with mostly stories I've already read! Though I'm sure it will happen sooner or later.

I think I addressed this in another thread. For a complete edition you'll need:

1) The Dunwich Horror and Others (Arkham House, 1984)
2) At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (Arkham House, 1985)
3) Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (Arkham House, 1987)
4) The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (Arkham House, 1989)
5) Miscellaneous Writings (Arkham House, 1995) -- contains the remaining scraps of fiction, ranging from "The Little Glass Bottle" which HPL wrote when he was seven to "The Battle That Ended the Century"
6) The Challenge from Beyond (Necronomicon Press, 1990) OR Nameless Cults (Chaosium, 2001) -- since Miscellaneous Writings contains only Lovecraft's contribution to the round-robin "The Challenge from Beyond"
7) Eyes of the God: The Weird Fiction and Poetry of R. H. Barlow -- contains the two rare revisions "The Slaying of the Monster" and "The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast", plus slightly revised versions of "The Battle That Ended the Century" and "The Night Ocean"

If you want the corrected versions of "Hypnos" and "The Shadow Out of Time", you may also want to pick up The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories (Penguin, 2004).

With the above books, you should get a minimum of overlap -- the largest being if you decide to get The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories.