| Title | : | Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0575081562 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780575081567 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 878 |
| Publication | : | First published April 28, 2008 |
This tome presents original versions of many of his most harrowing stories, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, in order of publication.
See also:
Eldritch Tales.
Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales Reviews
-
“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
Excellent collection of Lovecraft's stories, you've got most of his best ones in this collection; but it's such a big and somewhat cumbersome book.
Took me years to get through it, bought it in 2014 (crazy I know) but obviously that wasn't continuous reading, I'd read a story from it and leave it for ages with the bookmark in; he can be difficult to read sometimes due to his writing style - it's slow-paced and sometimes difficult for me to interpret because sometimes it seems to me like he starts rambling and I'm like..what's going on?
But I've been on a Lovecraft kick lately and I'm glad I finally finished most of his work, moving onto Eldritch Tales soon and that's me completed all of his fiction - as far as I know.
My favourite stories in Necronomicon were..
'The Rats in the Walls'
'The Tomb'
'The Dunwich Horror'
'The Shunned House'
'At the Mountains of Madness' -
All right, with this one under my belt, I think I can safely say that I’ve read everything Lovecraft has ever written in his life. I will then skip introducing the author––who doesn’t need any introduction, anyway––and go through a rundown of some of my most beloved horror stories of his, which you can find in this collection.
THE OUTSIDER is my favorite Lovecraft story bar none. It is also one of his shortest. Written in the first-person narrative (as is often the case in his fiction), it tells of a man (or is it?) who, after having lived as a recluse for what seems like a very long time in his darkened and lifeless castle (or is it?), decides one day to go out into the world and explore. There ensues a series of discoveries––with a devastating although somewhat anticipated reveal––which will seal the narrator’s fate forever. As said, this story is super short but masterfully executed, woven around the themes of loneliness, abnormality and the afterlife. The prose is as it should given the genre––divinely gothic, deliciously verbose and darkly purple. All in all, a masterpiece.
THE DREAMS IN THE WITCH-HOUSE is my second favorite and the only one that actually gave me goosebumps while reading it for the first time in bed at night. This story of a math student who decides to rent a room in a cursed house in which a witch and her hellish amalgam of a familiar are said to have lived is downright disturbing and creepy and just too well written for comfort. Which makes it yet another masterpiece in the Lovecraft canon.
THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK is my third most beloved Lovecraft story and also the last one he ever wrote (that we know of). Eschewing the first person for the third limited, Lovecraft treats us to a chilling account of what the protagonist, Robert Blake, discovers when, driven by his penchant for the occult, he decides to go and explore a haunted church in the town of Providence, RI. Here again the writing is on point as Lovecraft knows better than anyone how to create an atmosphere of claustrophobia and paranoia, playing unashamedly with the fear of the unknown and impending doom. Deeply steeped in the Cthulhu mythos, this story is a prime example of how curiosity can kill a cat.
THE CALL OF CTHULHU. Although not the first Lovecraft story to introduce an element of the Cthulhu mythos (that would be Dagon, also included in this collection), this one is the first to feature the foul-smelling, tentacle-wielding and potbellied deity in all its greasy and nasty glory. Written as an epistolary short story, it gives an account of the discovery of Cthulhu via a series of documents left behind by the great uncle of the narrator, Francis Wayland Thurston. Three words: groundbreaking, masterful, perfect.
THE RATS IN THE WALLS is another gothic masterpiece recounting the tale of Delapore, an American who decides to cross the pond and move to England into his ancestral manor, the ill-fated Exham Priory. After restoring it, Delapore soon discovers that something isn’t quite right about the place and, prompted by scurrying noises in the walls, decides to investigate. Lovecraft juggles many balls in this one––the haunted house, genetic mutations, cannibalism, forbidden worships and eldritch (doesn’t Lovecraft just love this word?) cults, the inescapability of heredity, mental disorder, etc.––providing us with nail-biting scenes of exploration and horror, and tying it all together (albeit loosely) into his infamous Cthulhu mythos. Definitely a winner.
THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH is yet another effective horror story set waist-deep in the Cthulhu mythos, and from what I’ve heard, a favorite of many Lovecraft aficionados. Told once again in the first person, the story is about a student (whose name is never revealed) who goes to the ruined seaside town of Innsmouth, Mass., for what he thinks will be a one-day trip. Lovecraft spares no words in describing the cursed town, and we soon understand that the nature of the curse boils down to an invasion of Innsmouth many years ago by the Deep Ones, an ancient people that came ashore from the bottom of the sea. From the town drunk with whom the narrator has a long (perhaps overlong?) conversation, we learn that the Deep Ones used to practice human sacrifices in Innsmouth and also did not hesitate to mate with local women, hence the fishy appearance of many of the inhabitants. The whole thing ends up with a big reveal, which for once isn’t as bad as one might expect for a Lovecraft story, and the author even gives us a long, very-well-written action scene toward the end, which is something rare enough to be mentioned and relished.
I guess I could go on like this forever, as there are many other stories in this collection that are worth reading and rereading, but I will stop here for now. It’s late, and I think I heard something scurrying in the walls. Wonder what it is…
OLIVIER DELAYE
Author of the SEBASTEN OF ATLANTIS series
The Forgotten Goddess -
Najpre, želim da pohvalim izdavačku kuću Orfelin na divnoj knjizi, predivnim ilustracijama, kvalitetu papira i same knjige kao i za izgled korica. Ovo je knjiga koji bi svaki ljubitelj horora trebalo da ima u svojoj kolekciji, iako jeste malo skuplja od ostalih ali isto tako ovde se pokazuje kako cena jeste kvalitet. Naime, čitalac se (pričam o Orfelinovom izdanju knjige) najpre suočava sa kratkom biografijom autora, odnosno Lavkrafta, zatim se prelazi na Istoriju Nekronomikona, veoma retke ali poznate mračne knjige koja igra ključnu ulogu u većini odabranih priča, nakon toga sledi 25 divno prevedenih horor priča autora Lavkrafta, i tek na kraju susrećemo se sa napomenama i čudnim pojmovima koje je upravo Lavkraft pominjao kroz priče, koje potpomažu čitaocu duboko shvatanje priče.
Želim napomenuti takođe da je u ovu knjigu utkana svaka moguća pažnja, od samog početka odnosno korica knjige, do realističnih i mračnih ilustracija svake priče, preko veoma informativnih beležaka koje Vam upotpunjuju pročitanu priču i na osnovu kojih možete naći filmove i stripove zasnovane na istim.
Mogu reći da sam veoma zadovoljna većinom priča, te bih volela da ih ocenim posebno sledećim ocenama:
Niarlototep 3 ⭐
Dagon 4⭐
Hram 3⭐
Otpadnik 4⭐
Čudna visoka kuća u izmaglici 5⭐
Izjava Randolfa Kartera 5⭐
Srebrni ključ 5⭐
Činjenice vezane za pokojnog Artura Džermina i njegovu porodicu 5⭐
Festival 5⭐
Gonič 4⭐
Herbert Vest, Reanimator 4⭐
S one strane 5⭐
Pikamnov model 5⭐
Muzika Eriha Zana 5⭐
Ispod piramida 2⭐
Ukleta kuća 5⭐
Pacovi u zidovima 5⭐
Snovi u veštičijoj kući 5⭐
Zov Ktulua 5⭐
Danički užas 3⭐
Senka nad Insmutom 5⭐
Stvar na pragu 5⭐
Boja iznad ovog svemira 5⭐
U zidinama Eriksa 4⭐
Stanovnik tame 4⭐
Neke sam ocenila sa slabijom ocenom, odnosno Danički užas i Ispod Piramida, naime Piramide jeste da je dobra priča, lepo zamišljena ali jednostavno ima puno istorijskih informacija da mi je došlo da preskočim čitavu priču ali ipak je završih do kraja. Dok Danički užas je na sva zvona nahvaljen, jeste dobra složena priča sa dobrim likovima ali jednostavno meni u trenutku nije prijala, stoga planiram da je u budućnosti ponovo pročitam i možda joj povećam ocenu.
Favoriti ove knjige su mi definitivno Festival, Muzika Eriha Zana, Senka nad Insmutom, Stvar na pragu i Boja iznad ovog svemira. Mogu reći da čitajući ove favorite nisam ni trepnula, takođe su veoma zarazne za čitanje tako da jedva čekate da saznate na koji način će se završiti ovo svemirsko ludilo. -
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn... ulnagr Yuggoth Farnomi ilyaa... ch'yar ul'nyar shaggornyth... Iä Hastur cf'ayak'vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgtmm... Hastur cf'tagn... mglw'nafh fhthagn-ngah cf'ayak 'vulgtmm vugtlag'n... ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthugha Fomalhaut n'gha-ghaa naf'lthagn...
-
I suppose the two best words to describe my feelings on the work of the 20th century's most prolific horror writer are "mostly disappointing".
THE GOOD
I wasn't disappointed with everything. A bunch of stories stood out for me as being genuine, page-turning excitement: The Colour Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, The Whisperer in Darkness, Dreams in the Witch House, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward were all outstanding pieces of spookery that still managed to give me chills nearly 100 years after the time of writing, and that is one heck of an accomplishment.
THE BAD
Maybe it's the generation gap, but I find it very hard to get accustomed to stories written with little or no dialogue. Wave after wave of endless paragraphs -broken only ever so slightly by the odd letter or telegram -is a tedious way to tell a story. This book contains 34 short stories, and by the end of the 4th one I was begging for some actual character work and dialogue, rather than: "And then I went here, and then this happened, and by the way here are some lovely descriptions of New England architecture for no particular reason". Every one of these stories -ESPECIALLY Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath -is less a work of prose and more of a steady ramble intermittently made all the more jarring when Lovecraft tosses in unwieldy words like "Shub-Niggurath" or "Ia Azathoth Ia Ia Yargoth Leng-Zok", because phrases like that add so much to the story.
The horror itself works occasionally, and when it does it's friggin awesome! But 80% of the time it's a melodramatic mess. I totally understand the "Jaws" method of horror, wherein the less you see of the monster, the more effective it is. But in Lovecraft's case, not only do we barely ever glimpse his infamous creatures, but whenever we DO catch a fleeting glimpse our protagonists -who are narrating these encounters -faint. Every. Single. Time. Did people in the 1920s just...FAINT a lot? Was fainting a nation-wide epidemic back then, like polio, or selfies? People in these stories faint at the drop of a fucking hat. I saw a rat. Faint! I heard a scary noise. Faint! I think there might be a piece of carrot stuck between my teeth. Faint!
As for the monsters themselves, like I said, they're barely, BARELY present. Lovecraft's imagination is strong enough to dream up so many fantastic terrors, yet he seems more keen on keeping them to himself. Even his protagonists are stingy with details; their accounts of the horrors they witnessed are usually along the lines of: "And then I saw something that was so frightening that I can't even describe how frightening it was because its frightening-quotient was utterly indescribable but trust me, it was really frightening, so you should totally faint now."
Lovecraft is also wont to repeat himself. A LOT. Yes, Howard, I know Arkham has "gambrel roofs". I know Nyarlathotep is a "crawling chaos", and I know Abdul Al-Hazred was known to be a "Mad Arab". I know this because after the first several hundred times you brought it up, it happened to stick. In "At The Mountains of Madness", if I'd had a dollar for every time Lovecraft used the words "decadent" and"demoniac", I could have purchased a very big yacht, or a very small country.
Considering that these stories are supposed to make up The Cthulu Mythos, I was a little miffed (to say the least) when I turned the final page and realized that I could only recall Cthulu's name popping up twice. TWICE, in 850 pages. And even then it was probably in some context like: "And I thought I saw Cthulu, but then I fainted."
I guess I was just hoping for something grander. Maybe Arkham Horror spoiled me, but I bought this book expecting an intricate tapestry of characters scattered throughout the same town, slowly unravelling the ancient mysteries of some hitherto-unknown supernatural force encroaching upon them from beyond time & space, finally uniting in some epic conclusion that would pit man against monster. Kinda like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, except instead of robots & superheroes it would be cosmic octopus monsters & hard-boiled 1920s detectives, embarking on their own unique individual adventures before coming together Avengers-style for the final curtain. Unfortunately, neither the monsters nor the humans receive much characterization. As mentioned, the monsters exist not on the page but solely in Lovecraft's mind, and the humans are usually dull & interchangeable. A few of these heroes seemed like they were ABOUT to get interesting, but then a cool breeze blew through their windows, naturally causing them to faint.
The cover of this book states that these are "the best weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft". Here's hoping I never have to read the worst. -
Lovecraft has to be broken down into his constituent parts in order to be comprehensible.
1. Man
2. Mythographer
3. Writer
The man, by far, is easily the most reprehensible and unforgivable. This may take a little explanation for those unfamiliar with the man and the writer. Firstly, HPL believed in a crude Social Darwinism/Eugenics married to a virulent racism/xenophobia and a despicable classism. When reading Necronomicon or any of his works all of these elements become impossible to ignore and are, virtually, shouted from the pages/screens. It is popular to dismiss these beliefs as being a part of the society he was raised in. Of course, he was raised in a racist, classist, xenophobic time, as well as a time when Social Darwinism, and especially eugenics, were very popular...amongst intellectuals. Still, other writers came out of such belief systems and their work was not penetrated by hate in the manner that HPL's work is. There is something almost infantile about this, which raises the specter of a facile Freudian reading of the man's character. The latter would not be very useful because it is culturally limited and scientifically invalid. It is enough to say that hate drives much of HPL's work and it makes this of limited value.
The writer is another level that needs to be looked at because it suggests the same infantile and superficial understanding of the world as well. Firstly, there is very limited character development; the attitude of HPL to women is at best ambivalent; exposition is shaky, and HPL had a tin ear for dialogue. The prose is almost exclusively purple--even for his creaky, gothic constructions. No writer or reader will find anything at this level to learn from HPL. The only element of HPL's writing worth the reader's attention is that he may be the first Horror/Science-Fantasy writer to leave the big-bad alive and well and man's position relative to this as tenuous.
The last element of HPL that should be looked at is his myth. Here is the one place where HPL shines. His creation of an ante-diluvian world of races not human on earth and others that came from off of earth is fascinating and worthy of study. Given the amount of fiction and 'fan-fiction' which his 'Cthulian' mythos has generated HPL remains a significant presence in the world of genre fiction--and, yes, there is a difference between genre and literature. For this reason, and this reason alone, HPL remains a writer worth revisiting.
However, the reader needs to be prepared for the moral vacuity and hate which they will encounter in the work of HPL. Not to mention, the horrific writing, which is often responsible for some of the worst published writing I have ever come across.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Not recommended for morally sensitive readers...or aesthetically inclined ones either. -
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.”
-H.P. Lovecraft
This collection of weird fiction short stories and novellas is slightly inconsistent in terms of quality, but it contains so many genuinely original and thoroughly harrowing, sinister tales that, on the whole, I found it a highly enjoyable—and often exquisitely eerie—reading experience. That said, I’d really only recommend it for hardcore fans of Lovecraft; for everyone else, there are far better—by which I really mean far shorter—ways to get acquainted with him. At nearly 900 pages, this volume is better suited to those who’ve already explored his more famous stories, although you’ll find all of his most popular works here, too, and they are incredibly fun to revisit. If you’re also interested in delving deeper into his oeuvre, in dwelling amongst “all the snarling chaos and grinning fear that lurk behind life,” you will find much to savor here. Lovecraft was a very dark, very strange little monkey.
List of Stories:
Night-Gaunts
Dagon
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Doom The Came to Sarnath
The Cats of Ulthar
The Nameless City
Herbert West - Reanimator*
The Music of Erich Zann*
The Lurking Fear*
The Hound
The Rats in the Walls*
Under the Pyramids
The Unnamable
In the Vault*
The Outsider
The Horror at Red Hook
The Colour Out of Space
Pickman’s Model*
The Call of Cthulhu*
Cool Air
The Shunned House
The Silver Key
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Dreams in the Witch-House
From Beyond
Through the Gates of the Silver Key
At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow Over Innsmouth*
The Shadow Out of Time
The Haunter of the Dark
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
To a Dreamer
Afterword: A Gentleman of Providence by Stephen Jones
* = personal favorite -
It seriously took a publisher how much of a century to title a collection of Lovecraft's stories "Necronomicon"? Like seventy years? Did it really just not occur to anyone? Shouldn't the first collected volume of his stories have been called that? I blame August Derleth.
Speaking of whom, I don't believe this edition features the re-edited versions of the texts available in the Library of America edition of Lovecraft. Necronomicon includes the older editions as published by Derleth's Arkham House, featuring Derleth's... let's call them "bold typographical choices", including italicizing the second half of the final sentence in many stories to heighten tension and irritate me.
Oh also! There's a rather nice map of Arkham, Massachusetts printed on the front and back endpapers. Admittedly it's very similar to the map accompanying the Arkham entry in The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, but never mind that. Endpaper maps! Whooooo. At least it's rather better than Necronomicon's other illustrations, which are for some reason the same three pictures of a shifty-lookin' guy, a pile of old books and papers, and a megalith, repeated fairly randomly at the first and last pages of many stories. Why not? Also it's bound really poorly, basically a paperbound book with hard boards, but this is true of virtually all hardcover editions published these days, which is lamentable but hardly unique to this book.
I sound like I'm being pretty hard on Necronomicon, but I was totally pleased with it. I like having a single-volume hardcover edition of most of Lovecraft's stories with the single most appropriate title possible. Not all stories are included--notable omissions include "Nyarlathotep" and "Beyond the Wall of Sleep"--but it includes most important works, such as "The Call of Cthulhu", "At the Mountains of Madness", "The Whisperer in Darkness", "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", and so on. That's really all I ask of a Necronomicon.
Also the italics are kinda like eldritch alien text, yeah? Sure.
*Edit* - Ok, looking back, there are more than just those three repeating illustrations.
There are also pictures of some houses. -
New life goal:
to write a cult book about another book that doesn't exist. -
The five star rating for this book is not because I think every story (or even most of them) were 5 stars, or because Lovecraft was a great writer (though I do think he was a better writer than he's often given credit for). It's because these stories are essential reading. Like him or hate him, Lovecraft casts a long, dark shadow over all of American fantasy and horror, and in fact, the stories are mostly pretty good, in a very dated way. Yes, Lovecraft wrote purple. Yes, his characterization is usually pretty thin. And yes, he was a horrible racist and it shows in his writing. But no one who touched this genre after him has been untouched by it, and if you have ever been awed or frightened or scared by a tale of eldritch horrors, unfathomable beings from beyond time and space, bubbling squamous obscenities so horrible that the very sight of them will erode your sanity, or vast, alien, cosmic gods inimical to humans and regarding us the way we regard germs... well, that's all Lovecraftian influence.
You also have Lovecraft to thank for a raft of awesome boardgames and RPGs, from the classic Call of Cthulhu to Eldritch Horror and Cthulhu Wars.
While Lovecraft's stories are typically labeled fantasy (hence his likeness being the trophy for the World Fantasy Award), he was really a science fiction writer, or perhaps science fantasy. His Elder Gods and the inhuman things that served them were not "gods" in the sense of being truly divine, but rather vast cosmic powers who exist on a scale beyond human comprehension. The "magic" sometimes found in his stories, even spells read from books like the Necronomicon, are likewise means of bending reality in ways Man Was Not Meant to Know, but ultimately his creatures are aliens, not demons, and his supernatural horror stems from science perverted beyond recognition, not from arcane witchcraft. Whenever something in the way of a more "traditional" monster appears in a Lovecraft story, like a mere ghost or vampire or werewolf, it's probably something much, much worse.
This collection contains most of Lovecraft's better known stories, focusing largely on his Cthulhu mythos cycle, so there is lots of squamous horror here. All the familiar names are here: Cthulhu, Hastur, Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, Dagon, etc. Monsters of all shapes and sizes, and degenerate inbred New England townsfolk who usually have nasty things in their barns, wells, attics, and woods.
If you want a Lovecraft primer, this is a good start. I'd read all these stories before, but many of them I had not read for years, so I enjoyed going through the classics again even if they don't bring me quite the same feeling of existential horror they did when I was a teenager.
Here is the complete list of stories in this audiobook:
Dagon
Herbert West, Reanimator
The Lurking Fear
The Rats in the Walls
The Whisperer in the Darkness
Cool Air
In the Vault
The Call of Cthulhu
The Color Out of Space
The Horror at Red Hook
The Music of Eric Zahn
The Shadow Out of Time
The Dunwich Horror
The Haunter of the Dark
The Outsider
The Shunned House
The Unnameable
The Thing on the Doorstep
Under the Pyramids
It's a fine collection of creepy and fantasy stories, and great inspiration before playing a game of Arkham Horror or Call of Cthulhu. -
You know I picked this up because I'd been told it gathered the Cthulhu mythos stories. Actually we start off with some of his early horror work (Cool Air, The rats in the Walls, etc.). Later on we do get into the Cthulhu stories. These are (as always with Lovecraft) reliably horrific and very well written.
Enjoy. -
Necronomicon: the Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft was my first taste of true classic horror—I mean I’ve read Poe, Irving, Shelley, etc. but for some reason I don’t think about classic horror when I think of those author’s stories. Lovecraft is the epitome of classic horror in my book. I haven’t read any of Algernon Blackwood’s spooky tales but from what I just read no one can beat Lovecraft.
I finished reading Jane Austen’s seven large novels not too long ago, and I was astounded by her writing ability. I think I just read someone who can not only rival her but top her. Lovecraft’s writing prose is one of the best of the classic writers I’ve read this year. The way he describes his monsters and establishes a creepy scene is definitely something worth studying if you’re a writer.
If you didn’t know, the Necronomicon is a collection of his best works. They aren’t all of his works. There were a few stories that took a while before getting to the “good stuff” but most immediately drew you into the story. My favorite is Herbert West—Reanimator. Not only did it have a necromancy-like feel to it like Frankenstein, but Lovecraft went into how West began his studies in bringing the dead to life and it completely drew my interest! It was not only creepy but cool as F%#K! I also liked the Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Colour out of Space, and the Call of Cthulhu (to name a few!).
If you love spooky tales and haven’t read Lovecraft I totally recommend that you do. You will not be disappointed! I’ve enjoyed reading these tales this past month and I really looked forward to my lunch hour at work because I could read my next Lovecraft story. I haven’t loved reading this much in a long time.
I also loved some of the audiobooks. If I forgot my book at home I would listen to one on youtube. The first youtube page I listened to was Horror Babble (with readings by Ian Gordan). What. A. Treat!!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIvp...
The next youtube page I came across that was just as good, if not better, was Horror Readings by G.M. Danielson. His introduction to each of the books is a bit much. I don't like the modern demonic horror stuff, but his readings are AMAZE-Ballz!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBw8...
I hope you enjoy these stories just as much as I did!
Don’t let the shadows bite! -
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Lavkraft je genije. "Velike i grandiozne" reci kod mnogih ljudi koji se bave pisanjem cesto zvuce jeftino dok ih Lavkraft tako magicno koristi da opise svaku nijansu zlog ludila. Njegov svet je svet mracnih planeta, njegov stil pisanja je jednostavan, pun epiteta i poetski. Pesnik je Ponora i uz E. A. Poa cini kamen temeljac horor zanra. Lavkraftova kosmologija je zbir crnih suza razasutih po kosmosu i do njegovih izmastanih dimenzija se stize kroz kapije srebnog kljuca. THE GREAT OLD ONES <3 -
Niarlatotep 4⭐
Dagon 4⭐
Hram 5⭐
Otpadnik 5⭐
Čudna visoka kuća u izmaglici 3⭐
Izjava Randolfa Kartera 5⭐
Srebrni ključ 4⭐
Činjenice vezane za pokojnog Artura Džermina i njegovu porodicu 5⭐
Festival 5⭐
Gonič 4⭐
Herbert Vest - Reanimator 5⭐
S one strane 5⭐
Pikmanov model 5⭐
Muzika Eriha Zana 4⭐
Ispod piramida 5⭐
Ukleta kuća 5⭐
Pacovi u zidovima 5⭐
Snovi u veštičijoj kući 5⭐
Zov Ktulua 5⭐
Danički užas 5⭐
Senka nad Insmutom 5⭐
Stvar na pragu 5⭐
Boja izvan ovog svemira 5⭐
U zidinama Eriksa 4⭐
Stanovnik tame 5⭐ -
H.P. Lovecraft has been on my list for years now. Horror fiction isn't usually my genre of choice, but I've heard people cite Lovecraft for so long that I felt a duty to read him and see what all the fuss is about. To be clear, after reading him I still don't understand what all the fuss is about.
As far as Lovecraft's obvious (let's not kid ourselves) racism, it's my belief that it is possible to separate the art from the artist. I still watch Roman Polanski films decades after Polanski was accused and pled guilty to rape, I don't avoid Tom Cruise films because he's the foremost member of a psychotic cult (just because the films are usually supposed to be good), and the same with regard to other unsavory figures like Woody Allen and Mel Gibson.
However, I do believe that with Lovecraft it's different. The man's racism is clearly evident in his stories. I wouldn't watch a Roman Polanski film in which the protagonist raped a 13-year-old, and the protagonists here often serve as mouthpieces for Lovecraft's racist views (and no, "he was a product of a racist society" does not and should not excuse him).
There is no purpose, as far as I could tell, for any of the racism present in these stories. They don't advance the plots in any way and the overtly racist characters - like one who calls his dog "niggerman" - are not portrayed as villains. No, they're the good guys.
Don't get me wrong, taking a stand against an obvious racist is much easier when you don't like any of his stories, and I don't like any of these stories. Not one - even though they're all so similar there might as well just be one. If someone could explain to me what literary merit H.P. Lovecraft has - other than merely serving to inspire Stephen King and other genre writers - I would be grateful.
There is nothing the tiniest bit scary here (other than the aforementioned racism). When Lovecraft isn't ripping off better writers, like Mary Shelley - whose "Frankenstein" obviously served as inspiration for tales like "Herbert West: Reanimator" - Lovecraft is just writing about the same alien-like creatures who are rarely if ever seen but who cause the male protagonists to faint all the same.
Once I'd gotten halfway through I just started skimming the remaining stories. I'm confident I didn't miss anything because I read them all in the first half.
Overrated, repetitive, and boring are the three words that I'll associate with "Lovecraft" from here on. Oh, and racist.
Don't waste your time. -
This is the best audio edition I've come across for Lovecraft. The quality is excellent but I'm dropping a star because there are no chapter titles. How can you have a short story collection without chapter titles?
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“Niarlatotep” 3/5
“Dagon” 4/5
“Hram” 4/5
“Otpadnik” 5/5 💛
“Čudna visoka kuća u izmaglici” 2/5
“Izjava Randolfa Kartera” 5/5
“Srebrni ključ” 3/5
“Činjenice vezane za pokojnog Artura Džermina i njegovu porodicu” 3/5
“Festival” 5/5 💛
“Gonič” 5/5
“Herbert Vest - Reanimator” 3/5
“S one strane” 5/5
“Pikmanov model” 4/5
“Muzika Eriha Zana” 4/5
“Ispod piramida” 3/5
“Ukleta kuća” 4/5
“Pacovi u zidovima” 5/5
“Snovi u veštičijoj kući” 4/5
“Zov Ktulua” 5/5 💛
“Danički užas” 4/5
“Senka nad Insmutom” 5+/5 💛
“Stvar na pragu” 5/5
“Boja izvan ovog svemira” 5/5 💛
“U zidinama Eriksa” 2/5
“Stanovnik tame” 4/5
“Nekronomikon” - 4/5
Svaka čast izdavačkoj kući Orfelin na ovakvoj luksuznoj knjizi, izuzetnom dizajnu, savršenim ilustracijama i zanimljivim dodacima! -
I could not give this book five stars in good conscious, and I will explain why. It's no secret that Lovecraft was a deeply racist individual. Because children also browse Goodreads, I want parents to know that this compilation contains overt racist slurs and connotations. Of course, one can argue that this is just a product of the author's imagination. I respectfully disagree. Although, Lovecraft was a brilliant writer, the writer's overt hatred of other races sometimes poured out into his writing. He was simply a product of the era he lived in.
If you're like me and this doesn't really detract from the genius of Lovecraft's writing, then I strongly recommend this compilation. -
Cyclopean.
p. 454: Carter now spoke with the leaders int he soft language of cats, and learned that his ancient friendship with the species was well known and often spoken of in the places where cats congregate. He had not been unmarked in Ulthar when he passed through, and the sleek old cats had remembered how he petted them after they had attended to the hungry zoogs who looked evilly at a small black kitten. And they recalled, too, how he had welcomed the very little kitten who came to see him at the inn, and how he had given it a saucer of rich cream in the morning before he left. The grandfather of that very little kitten was the leader of the army now assembled, for he had seen the evil procession from a far hill and recognized the prisoner as a sworn friend of his kind on earth and in the land of dream. [The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath]
What can I say, I've become a Lovecraft fan.
While most Lovecraftian stories can be summed up to: "something unspeakably terrifying happened but it was so horrible that I cannot actually describe it", his ideas, weird universes and the beings within are unique. What seems cliche to us now is largely thanks to him (except maybe Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!).
I stole the following from /r/lovecraft: "One time, this guy went to a place, and it was SO spooky. But, being a man of science, and of an inquisitive mind, he continued going to the spooky place, and damn was it spooky.
Eventually, he became obsessed with the spooky place, and the locals, who know about but don't speak of spooky things, shunned him.
Then he died under mysterious circumstances that everybody knew was because of the spooky thing, but nobody would admit." :'D
Before Lovecraft, horror was about killers, kidnappers, ghosts - human faults and sins and divine (or other) punishment in the sense of you reap what you sow. Lovecraft instead creates a vision of a vast cosmos completely indifferent to humans, and their earthly bullsh*t, filled with forces before which we are helpless, which we cannot hope to understand, and which would destroy our minds if we only saw or knew. We could categorize him as a writer of cosmic horror.
Obviously, he wrote a lot so not all stories fall under this category, but the best ones do.
I recommend The Cats of Ulthar, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Outsider, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and the Whisperer In Darkness.
P.S. I listened to many of these stories on youtube, there's a fantastic channel who does readings of various horror writers:
horrorbabble -
There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.
—Arthur Machen (quoted as an introduction to “The Horror at Red Hook”)
Everyone must read a little Lovecraft and Blackstone Audio’s recently published edition of Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft is, in my opinion, the perfect way to do that. Like re-animated corpses, Lovecraft’s most popular stories from the 1920s and 1930s pulp magazines are brought back to life by some of the best readers in the business: Paul Michael Garcia, Bronson Pinchot, Stephen R. Thorne, Keith Szarabajka, Adam ... Read More:
http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi... -
This is my H P. Lovecraft's Dream Book! The book design is grand, it also contents most of Lovecraft's major short novels. I borrowed the book from library but I still totally want to own it!
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If i was stranded on a little island with just one book, this would be it.
The best horror stories ever written.
Could also be used as a chair or a little table in this scenario. It's huge. -
Well that wasn’t worth the hype. Didn’t really enjoy the casual racism or misogyny. The white guy investigates a haunted looking building story was done to death.
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Absolutely Classic Tales of Occult Horror - Lovecraft Created His Own Cthulhu Mythos, A True Original
Lovecraft's name is synonymous with creepy, occult tales of horror, one of several legendary writers who made the Weird Tales pulp magazines famous in the 1920s and 30s: H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, etc. But I had ever actually read any of his work, and when I found a large collection of his stories available from the Audible Plus Catalogue (free for members), it seemed a perfect opportunity to finally give this legendary writer a chance.
The first story featuring Cthulhu is "The Call of Cthulhu" was published in Weird Tales in 1928, and it really does capture all the great aspects of Lovecraft's fertile and dark imagination, as well as his undeniable racism against the "darker, primitive " races. It's an inescapable part of his writing and personal beliefs that he firmly believed in the superiority of white Europeans over other races and cultures, so if this will prevent you from appreciating his other achievements, it's understandable but unfortunate. Basically that same attitude was widespread throughout Western societies in the Victorian age of England and early centuries of the colonial period (and long afterward as well). But to judge those authors from a current perspective is a bit unfair, as we have come so far since then. It's still quite overt at times, but it's just a part of his legacy.
These stories really blew me away with the relentless fertility of grotesque images and compelling stories, each a self-contained and skillfully written tale, though again the purple, over-the-top prose may not be to everyone's taste. It's like a very, very rich dessert of grotesqueries, quite impressive but a bit overwhelming at times. Still, his unique Cthulhu melting of a huge range of dark Elder Gods mythology is a truly unique experience, and I found myself really drawn into his world, and found these stories just as vivid now after almost a century, which cannot be said of many older authors.
Just for a little taste, feast on this:
"Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another through endless, ensanguined corridors of purple fulgurous sky . . . formless phantasms and kaleidoscopic mutations of a ghoulish, remembered scene; forests of monstrous overnourished oaks with serpent roots twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an earth verminous with millions of cannibal devils; mound-like tentacles groping from underground nuclei of polypous perversion . . . insane lightning over malignant ivied walls and daemon arcades choked with fungous vegetation. . . . Heaven be thanked for the instinct which led me unconscious to places where men dwell; to the peaceful village that slept under the calm stars of clearing skies." -
NOTES ON THE STORIES
The Colour Out Of Space = WIN. And it's a stand-alone story. You don't need to know anything about the mythos for this one.
Pickman's Model = WIN. Another stand-alone story, without reference to the mythos. Actually very creepy.
The Shadow Over Innsmouth = WIN. A good introduction to the mythos, and a great introduction Lovecraft's story-telling. A perfectly crafted, perfectly creepy tale. -
There is no denying that Lovecraft set the benchmark for American horror for generations and he is rightly acknowledged by those who followed him. However, due to the densely packed stories which deserve to be thought over and the intensely bleak and gloomy aspect which threatens to overwhelm readers, this is a volume which is quite a trek to read in one sitting.
'Necronomicon: The Best Weird Fiction' collects some great stories, but is probably best experienced when dipped into between other books. -
Not really my thing.
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La raccolta di racconti (scritti tra il 1921 eil 1933) ha come denominatore comune la citazione in ognuno di essi del famoso libro proibito, il Necronomicon. L'orrore del male assoluto non è più metafisico, ma proviene dall'immensità degli spazi multidimensionali. C'è stata come una rivoluzione galileiana applicata all'immagine del male e dell’orrore. L’uomo, la terra, lo spazio-tempo, la tridimensionalità perdono di peso, di senso nell’universo delle molte dimensioni, delle infinite dimensioni descritto dalla fisica moderna. Il senso comune, la ragione quotidiana servono a ben poco per comprendere lo spazio delle geometrie non euclidee, il tempo relativo della fisica di Einstein, le curvature dello spazio tempo…
Se il male un tempo attentava all’uomo e alla sua salvezza, e l’orrore era in questo, il rischio sempre presente della dannazione eterna, in Lovecraft, probabilmente ateo, il male e l’orrore è ora la consapevolezza della mancanza di senso dell’uomo e del suo piccolo mondo sperduto e annichilito nelle profondità di infiniti universi multidimensionali, che travalicano la comprensione e che trascinano nella follia chi cerca di comprenderli, chi si affaccia oltre le soglie dell’esperienza quotidiana. Senza che del resto l’antica visione del male scompaia, anzi viene integrata, riletta e interpretata in questa versione cosmica. Per me è stato interessante vedere come un protagonista di uno di questi racconti sia uno studente di matematica, che fa esperienza nel sogno e nel delirio con queste realtà. La trance, l’incantesimo, le vecchie pratiche di magia nera introducono agli universi retti dalle geometrie non euclidee: il giovane matematico diventerà sempre più intuitivo dopo questi sogni, avrà sempre una maggiore chiarezza e sarà capace di risolvere le equazioni di Riemann. Le antiche superstizioni sono da sempre una porta efficace che apre sull’orrore e sulla follia che proviene dalla visione e contemplazione degli abissi multidimensionali e delle divinità del Caos che li abitano.
Il male dalle profondità cosmiche viene a contatto a volte con il nostro universo e tenta di distruggerlo. A volte è la curiosità intellettuale (matematica, filosofica, folklorica, esoterica) a evocare e richiamare il male dalle sue profondità. I protagonisti di questi racconti sono tutti degli appassionati della ricerca intellettuale che si spingono oltre le soglie del lecito e a volte ne restano annichiliti.
Va beh. Arrivederci
Mi vado a rileggere il Prologo del Vangelo di Giovanni; è molto costruttivo,… e dà speranza. -
Relato breve que simula ser un texto real sobre la procedencia y situación actual del Necronomicón, desde su origen a manos del árabe loco Abdul Alhazred hacia el 700 d.C. hasta las copias actuales que se conocen, pasando por todas las ediciones y traducciones que se han sucedido a lo largo de los siglos entre acontecimientos perturbadores y censuras del manuscrito.
Resulta muy interesante conocer el trasfondo del libro maldito que tanto aparece en la literatura de Lovecraft y en otras obras (tanto dentro como fuera del universo lovecraftiano). -
This is my kind of horror!
Lovecraft was a giant genius of this field!
He had a lot of groundbreaking ideeas.
The audio version was also astounding well made.
