Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch ISBN: 0-345-35080-4 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 12 May, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.64 (101 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Best Lovecraft Collection Available
Comment: This book is the best in the series of short story collections issued by DelRey books, and probably contains the best collection of classic HPL stories available today. Here you have the best and most revered stories from Lovecraft's prime period of creativity. You can clearly see how influential this work has been for all horror fiction that has been written since. Clive Barker and Stephen King are definitely fans, and even movies like "Poltergeist" and "Ghostbusters" are clearly inspired by Lovecraft. As usual with Lovecraft stories, it is often difficult to get through the heavy prose and obscure references, and reading the tales will take a lot of patience. But your patience will be rewarded by many classic short stories that will really get under your skin. Highlights of this book include "The Rats in the Walls" which really reminded me of the Poltergeist movie; the all-time occult masterpiece "The Call of Cthulhu"; the intriguiging "The Music of Erich Zann" which is surprisingly artistic and offbeat for Lovecraft; and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" which covers not just the evil of supernatural creatures but also of small-town humans - a motif that is seen in many Stephen King stories.
Rating: 4
Summary: Not bad introduction to Lovecraft's work
Comment: These are the stories included in this collection.
The Rats In The Walls
The Picture In The House
The Outsider
Pickman's Model
In The Vault
The Silver Key
The Music of Erich Zann
The Call of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer Of Darkness
The Colour Out Of Space
The Haunter Of The Dark
The Thing On The Doorstep
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Dreams In The Witch-House
The Shadow Out Of Time
First time readers expecting something contemporary will be in for a shock. Most of Lovecraft's writing style is straightforward narrative, no characters speaking, and it may seem dry and drab. Most of the time, the protagonist is in the first person and is told from the point of view of that person looking back on the story or reporting it from a journalistic point of view. The stories are set in New England, mostly Arkham, Massachusetts which houses Miskatonic University. Most of them fall under unknown horrors, strange beings from another universe (the Great Old Ones), and things that wouldn't be out of place in the Twilight Zone, Ray Bradbury Presents, or Tales From The Crypt.
One of these stories, The Dunwich Horror, about how a human mutates in the course of the story, was made into a movie in 1970, and that has some actual dialogue.
The Colour In Space is actually an interesting one, portraying the devastating effects a meteor has on a valley and the family living in it, could make a good made-for-TV drama. So could The Shadow Of Innsmouth, about a strange-looking group of people and a weird race found in the Pacific. The protagonist learns the bulk of the story from a Zadok Allen, a 96-year old man who has witnessed a lot in the town, and there is dialogue, mostly from Allen.
The weirdest story is The Shadow Out Of Time, which deals astral travels a man may or may not have experienced, and encountering a race that might have existed back in time.
What brought me to buy one of his collections of short stories was the interest in the Old Ones, powerful beings from another universe who exert their evil powers on Earth from afar.
After reading most of these stories, I'll say it'll take me a while to get into Lovecraft, although I find some of the stories imaginative. As for bloodcurdling and macabre, well, maybe for its day, but not today.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Stories From A Master of Horror
Comment: Writing in the '20s and '30s, and being marginalized by major publishers, H.P. Lovecraft was forced publish his work in various obscure pulp-horror magazines. Unfortunately, his talent as a writer of horror/science fiction wasn't recognized until after his death in the late 1930s, and it was only then that his friends were able to start their own independent publication of his work. Lovecraft's literary talent and the scope of his imagination are well presented in this collection of short stories. Lovecraft admired and emulated the work of Edgar Allan Poe and his short stories follow the same plot structures, themes, and prose as that of Poe's. The narrators are usually avid empiricists such as detectives or scientists who come face to face with the unexplainable. As the story progresses, the narrator's confidence in his logical reasoning or use of the scientific method clashes with the unknown, unfathomable, or unthinkable, and he eventually becomes mad or nihilistic. The stories are almost always in the form of a retrospective narrative whereby the author reassures the reader that he's not mad (i.e. 'After you read what I have to say you will see for yourself whether I'm truly mad...') Many of Lovecraft's stories consist of themes and plots of the occult and his own imagined mythology. Lovecraft developed a mythology (often referred to as the Ctulluh myths) about various races of amorphic aliens who came to live on Earth millions of years ago. Over time, these aliens fought each other and some were vanquished and sealed in their forgotten cities by magic rituals and symbols. Many of the cities, of non-euclidean geometry, are burried in deserts or in antarctic mountains while others lie beneath the sea. Although physically dead, these sentient beings remain active through phenomenal esp powers which they use to control humans. The 'gods' use the humans to spawn and/or to liberate themselves from their prisons. Inspired by his invented mythology of primordial alien creatures, Lovecraft wrote 'That is not dead which can eternal lie, yet in stranger eons even death may die.' So enjoy these wonderful short stories from the master of occult horror. If you love Poe, you will most certainly love Lovecraft.
 |
Title: Dreams of Terror and Death : The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft by H. P. Lovecraft ISBN: 0345384210 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 11 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror by H. P. Lovecraft ISBN: 0345329457 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 13 September, 1991 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
 |
Title: The Road to Madness by H. P. Lovecraft, John Jude Palencar, Barbara Hambly ISBN: 0345384229 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 01 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft ISBN: 034542204X Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 14 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
 |
Title: The Doom That Came to Sarnath by H.P. Lovecraft ISBN: 0345331052 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 13 September, 1991 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
