(Part 2) Best products from r/Lovecraft

There is a book titled, "Hardboiled Cthulhu" here it is on amazon i have it. Some of the stories just plain suck, but some are badass. It basically takes that "James Cagney/ Humphrey Bagart" vibe and at times does very well.
That type of genre mash-up is tough to come by.
Another FANTASTIC book I read is called "Shadows Over Baker Street". amazon link here I LOVED this book. Two of my favorite things, Sherlock Holmes and HPL Mythos. Those two seem to fit together perfectly.

For criticism of HPL's works i would highly recommend:

Dissecting Cthulhu

A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe
or any volume in the Lovecraft Annual




For Biography on Lovecraft:

H.P. Lovecraft: A Life

...or the expanded version of the above I Am Providence




And Lovecraft's letters (edited and compiled by Joshi) are really the best way to get deep into Lovecraft, although I'll warn you, you really are reading HPL's conversations with his friends, so there is a tremendous amount of biographical detail, but not a terrible amount in the way of talk about his own work. Some of the best:

Letters to James F. Morton

A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard

O Fortunate Floridian: H.P. Lovecraft's Letters to R.H. Barlow

I recommend picking up some of the anthology books that are frequently published. I have a number of them, and they have turned me onto a lot of great authors. I recommend New Cthulhu I, New Cthulhu II, and anything edited by Ross E. Lockhart.

Some standout stories that come to mind:

• "Old Virginia" - Laird Barron (the first one of his I read, I became a huge fan, great stuff)
  
• "Bad Sushi" - Cherie Priest
  
• "Take Me To The River" - Paul McAuley
  
• "Another Fish Story" - Kim Newman (one of my favorite stories ever, most of his short stories are really good).
  

I can't comment on how good it is as a collection, as I've never read it, but I can say that I'd try and steer clear from illustrations.

Most of Lovecraft's work is designed to make your imagination do the work, and a lot of the creatures he creates are meant to be 'indescribable', so illustrations do them no justice. There is some amazing fan art work out there, but Lovecraft really thrives when you let yourself scare yourself.

Personally I read the Penguin Classics, which are £10 per volume with 3 volumes. ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Call-Cthulhu-Other-Weird-Stories/dp/0141187069 )

This is not written by Lovecraft, but I really enjoyed it. Collection of short stories by different authors, good ones. Sherlock Holmes crossover as well.
http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Baker-Street-Michael-Reaves/dp/0345455282

It's been done in a Lovecraft anthology GN before. It's absolutely beautiful, too!

NINJEDIT!

It's in here. The book is a very, very good buy. If I were you, I'd pick it up.

I thought The Abyss Above Us by Ryan Notch was very good. It's a self-published novel split into two books for no good reason that I can see. Very atmospheric, very spooky.

I also greatly enjoyed the Harry Stubbs books by David Hambling. They're not Lovecraftian in tone -- actually they're mysteries. But in every case the mystery is something straight out of Lovecraft.

Dunno if it's the best, but I have this one, which has some pretty nice illustrations.

https://www.amazon.com/Petersens-Field-Guide-Cthulhu-Monsters/dp/0933635486

I haven't read this, but I've read this written by the editor of that anthology. Deeply thought through, it's not just listing various Mythos deities but truly gets into the philosophy necessary for the practice. Fascinating stuff. I still think about it's contents.

If you are interested in this sort of thing the Papua New Guinea highlands only made contact recently.

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Interesting model for how most of pre-civilisation humanity lived - walk into the next valley, get a spear in the leg.

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The Minyamin tribe in the centre became cannibals because the animals were hunted out by surrounding tribes.

They contracted Kuru, laughing disease, a protein-based virus essentially that helped us discover Mad Cow Disease.

Even then, they maintained a taboo on hunting an endangered possum because they knew they'd be extinct - some deep thinking going across generations there.

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Throwim Way Leg by Tim Flannery is a good read - the grandparents still remembered how to strap a human torso and limbs up like a backpack and wrapping heads in leaves for soup.

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None of this gets recorded in societies without writing, Mesopotamia, ancient China, the Mayans, etc... all exception to the rule that the vast majority of humanity lived under.

Which is of course, our lord and saviour Cthulhu, may he eat me last /s

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The amount of knowledge one tribe member had in his head was vast. we are morons in comparison:

https://www.amazon.com.au/Throwim-Way-Leg-Tim-Flannery/dp/1876485191/ref=asc_df_1876485191/?tag=googleshopdsk-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=341774368942&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1177116967113129214&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9069099&hvtargid=pla-675304675895&psc=1

Good tidings are upon thee fellow cultists, for I have discovered several thanks to tvtropes.org!


Cthulhu's Reign
https://www.amazon.com/Cthulhus-Reign-Darrell-Schweitzer/dp/0756406161


Cthulhu Armageddon
https://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Armageddon-Post-Apocalypse-Western/dp/1519054386/ref=sr_1_91?ie=UTF8&qid=1482548657&sr=8-91&keywords=Cthulhu


And a somewhat less post-apocalypse but including many elements you may seek
The Cthulhu Wars: The United States' Battle Against the Mythos
https://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Wars-United-Battles-Against/dp/1472807871/ref=sr_1_98?ie=UTF8&qid=1482548687&sr=8-98&keywords=Cthulhu


I can't attest to the quality of these works, however they would seem to be directly up your alley. Please if anyone should acquire any of the listed texts before I have, do be sure to inform us all of your opinions! At the very least myself as I am short of coin and long to know how those tales play out.

Rudimentary Peni is more punk, H. P. Lovecraft (band) is psychedelic...if you're interested in the variety of music inspired by Lovecraft, I'd strongly recommend Gary Hill's The Strange Sound of Cthulhu.

Cthulhu, Les Créatures du Mythe All the best illustrations are in this book. They're amazing, specially The flying polyps. It's in french though. I have this one.

Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters English book by same author, not sure about the content and illustrations, don't know at all if they're the same. Don't own this one.

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Edit: added details.

You can get Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe together in one volume for only ten bucks! I'm really grateful to Penguin for releasing this, since both books had been out of print before this.

The thing I love about Ligotti, is that he took the monsters and mystery of writers like Lovecraft and brought them into the workaday world. So many of his stories center around the drudgery and banality of trying to earn a living and what it can do to you internally, both physically and emotionally. I've always credited Ligotti as having invented the Creature In The Gray Flannel Suit genre of fiction.

What sort of illustrations/notes are you looking for? Annotations and drawings from other artists/authors? Or correspondences/notes and drawings from Lovecraft himself?

I have Necronomicon and Eldritch Tales that together cover the complete works. Necronomicon has all of the main fiction, and Eldritch Tales has some of the less popular/well-known stuff as well as some correspondence and notes. The hardcover editions have a very nice look and feel to them... although it looks like the hardcover of Eldritch Tales might be a bit hard to come by these days.

Lovecraft anthology's are fantastic. The artists do a good job of showing you things, without showing you everything:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1906838283/

Alhazred: Author of the Necronomicon was a really good book. I really liked it anyway.

It's still in manuscript stage at this point. Publishing will happen in a little over a year going by previous competitions.

I actually won this prize in 2015 and you can buy my book from that year if you want.

It's still kinda weird lit, with more of a traditional folklore/myth grounding:

https://www.amazon.com/Children-Spider-Imam-Baksh/dp/9768267011/

It also ha creepy deranged cultists that are very Lovecraftian and become more so as the book progresses.

I recently read The Abyss Above Us by Ryan Notch. Maybe three out of five stars but I couldn't put it down and it was a quick, fun read.

The really sad part about Lovecraft is that there is no complete volume of his works. Wikipedia has links to everyone of his stories. Yet for a printed form of his works your options are limited. The "Necronomicon" collection is incomplete and the binding is not worth the price. The best almost complete edition is An H.P. Lovecraft Anthology: More Than 50 Weird Tales but it is still incomplete and people complain over the size of the print. Your best bet as was mentioned was the Del Ray editions. Between "Dreams of Terror and Death" and "The Road to Madness" you can have the most important stories in a readable and cheap edition. I recommend starting with the novellas, especially the ones in the Cthulu Mythos, and then branching out to the short stories of the Dream Cycle.

It's not complete, it is missing the poems, and a few stories he did as collaborations. This and this, contain more than the one you've given.

I have all three, the complete fiction is a much, much nicer edition than the two I linked, and while it is missing the poems, it is still a great buy for the price. Also, you should buy the one directly from amazon, not the third party.

+1

came in here to say pretty much this. most of the mythology is loosely-woven throughout the entirety of hpl's works. his "dream cycle" kind of has it's own mythology that is more or less summed up in the dream-quest of unknown kadath and stretches throughout all the stories represented in this volume.

Both of those are contained in this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Songs-Dreamer-Grimscribe-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143107763/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543345502&sr=8-1&keywords=songs+of+a+dead+dreamer+and+grimscribe

Great value for that book. I also highly recommend Teatro Grottesco by Ligotti. It's the book that got me into him.

I know of a few that have a sort of an organized-crime (or more general noir) vibe to them, such as Kim Newman's "Big Fish" and Ran Cartwright's "Flesh and Scales" [the latter more fits the organized crime aspect than the former, but I found the former to be a better overall story].

However, something I know by name but not by exact content that might be worth looking into is the James Ambeuhl edited collection Hardboiled Cthuhlu (http://www.amazon.com/Hardboiled-Cthulhu-Two-fisted-Tentacled-Terror/dp/0975922971/). It's a book I've been meaning to buy and thumb through one of these days but simply haven't, yet.

Mostly none of it. But there's an excellent anthology of Lovecraft/Holmes crossover stories, Shadows over Baker Street.

I really enjoyed the anthology of New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird. It slips and slides from genre to genre, and generally speaking, the writing is impeccable, as is the treatment of the mythos itself.

Do you mean this one?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cthulhu-Ancient-One-Tribute-Box/dp/145214477X/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=cthulhu+statue&qid=1570468442&sprefix=cthulhu+statue&sr=8-3

If so yes it’s very good quality for its price and it comes with a mini comic

Is this version any good?

Not OP, but I'm 99% sure I own the same figure, which is this one.

The order I would suggest would be:

The Necronomicon

• Dagon (Ch. 1)
  
• Herbert West - Reanimator (Ch. 2-7)
  
• The Lurking Fear (Ch. 8)
  
• The Rats in the Walls (Ch. 9)
  
• The Whisperer in Darkness (Ch. 10 - 17)
  
• Cool Air (Ch. 18)
  
• In the Vault (Ch. 19)
  
• The Call of Cthulhu (Ch. 20 - 22)
  
• The Color Out of Space (Ch. 23)
  
• The Horror at Red Hook (Ch. 24 - 30)
  
• The Music of Erich Zann (Ch. 31)
  
• The Shadow Out of Time (Ch. 32 - 39)
  
• The Dunwich Horror (Ch. 40 - 49)
  
• The Haunter of the Dark (Ch. 50)
  
• The Outsider (Ch. 51)
  
• The Shunned House (Ch. 52 - 56)
  
• The Unnameable (Ch. 57)
  
• The Thing on the Doorstep (Ch. 58 - 62)
  
• Under the Pyramids (Ch. 63)
  
  Eldritch Tales
  
  -History of the Necronomicon
  
  -The Alchemist
  
  -A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson
  
  -The Beast in the Cave
  
  -The Poe-et's Nightmare
  
  -Memory
  
  -Despair
  
  -The Picture in the House
  
  -Beyond the Wall of Sleep
  
  -Psychopompos; A Tale in Rhyme
  
  -The White Ship
  
  -The House
  
  -The Nightmare Lake
  
  -Poetry and the Gods
  
  -Nyarlathotep
  
  -Polaris
  
  -The Street
  
  -Ex Oblivione
  
  -Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
  
  -The Crawling Chaos
  
  -The Terrible Old Man
  
  -The Tree
  
  -The Tomb
  
  -Celephais
  
  -Hypnos
  
  -What the Moon Brings
  
  -The Horror at Martin's Beach
  
  -The Festival
  
  -The Temple
  
  -Hallowe'en in a Suburb
  
  -The Moon-Bog
  
  -He
  
  -Festival
  
  -The Green Meadow
  
  -Nathicana
  
  -Two Black Bottles
  
  -The Last Test
  
  -The Wood
  
  -The Ancient Track
  
  -The Electric Executioner
  
  -Fungi from Yuggoth
  
  -The Trap
  
  -The Other Gods
  
  -The Quest of Iranon
  
  -The Challenge From Beyond
  
  -In a Sequester'd Providence Churchyard Where Once Poe Walk'd
  
  -Ibid
  
  -Azathoth
  
  -The Descendant
  
  -The Book
  
  -The Messenger
  
  -The Evil Clergyman
  
  -The Very Old Folk
  
  -The Thing in the Moonlight
  
  -The Transition of Juan Romero
  
  -Supernatural Horror in Literature
  
  At The Mountains Of Madness
  
  The Shadow Over Innsmouth
  
  From there, you can also throw in The Dream Cycle if you like. There is a small amount of overlap with these books, but I didn't mind at all. Most of the stories that overlap are ones that I thoroughly enjoyed, so I just read them again. There are some stories from a few other authors thrown in, but as far as Lovecraft goes, it covers everything except for Old Bugs and Sweet Ermengarde
  
  I didn't include any of his poems in this, however most, if not all of his writings are public domain and can be found here. I just like having a physical copy because I like the feel of a real book.

I highly recommend Alhazred by Donald Tyson

If you do not want to commit to the full length Joshi biography this might be a good alternative. An earlier, more compact version of Joshi's biography.

Sure:

https://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Ancient-One-Tribute-Box/dp/145214477X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1518408143&sr=8-2&keywords=cthulhu+statue&dpID=51ejGMsppSL&preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

S.T. Joshi has written one that is generally well regarded

Well, you're in luck...there's quite a bit available: https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Sound-Cthulhu-Inspired-Lovecraft/dp/184728776X/

https://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Ancient-One-Tribute-Box/dp/145214477X there you go.

Cthulhu: The Ancient One Tribute Box https://www.amazon.com/dp/145214477X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_GBezDbQA9HS5Y

https://www.amazon.com/dp/145214477X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_GBezDbQA9HS5Y

Not OP, but got this for myself not too long ago...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/145214477X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I bought the two big Gollancz Lovecraft books, Necronomicon and Eldritch Tales, a year or two back. Does anyone know how this stacks up against those in terms of completeness? Eldritch Tales includes many of the collaborations, the poetry and The Supernatural in Horror Fiction (which I think should be a part of every really good Lovecraft collection).

There is a collection called The Dream Cycle of HP Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death, that contains most if not all of these.

Amazon Link