Even though for years I've been pointing out when things are "Lovecraftian" in fiction, I'd never actually read any works by H. P. Lovecraft until just recently.

I quite like him so far! So far I've read "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 in the Darkness", and "The Colour Out of Space" from my anthology, and I intend to go pick up a few more anthologies once this one is empty.

I enjoy his writing style quite a lot, and it's been very creepy so far, though I suppose I'm not terribly experienced with horror fiction as it is. Personal favorites at this point are probably "The Picture in the House", "The Call of Cthulhu" (perhaps that was inevitable), and "The Whisperer in the Darkness".

I was wondering about others' experiences with the "Lovecraft Mythos" and their thoughts on it, especially since we have more than one homage to Lovecraft's works in Lusternia!

I liked Polaris.

I loved all the Cthulhu stuff when I read it many years ago. I looked at it as campy and thought it was just delicious. I didn't go for his straight horror stuff, it was way too scary! He also has one book that's straight fantasy, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, that I know I really liked, but I can't remember a thing about it now.

The tops in campy Cthulhu is a musical done by the Lovecraft Society. I stumbled across the website at work and was laughing my head off at the clips. Got the CD right away. Cthulhu musical CD

Read pretty much every Lovecraft story. He's one of my favourite authors. "Herbert West: Reanimator" is one of my favourites, as well as "Nyarlathotep".

I'm also a huge Lovecraft fan. I've read most of the ones you've listed there. "The Picture in the House" and "Whisperer in the Darkness" are probably my favorite out of all of them. The Colour out of Space was good, but also one of his more random pieces.

I'm not sure if they will still have it, but a few months ago I bought a hardcover anthology from Barnes and Noble that contained every piece ever written by Lovecraft. It was only like $15 too. It was part of one of their 'great literature' series or something - an effort to take some of the best pieces of writing and make them affordable and in hard cover.

Whatever you get you should pick up one that "The Shadow over Innsmouth" in it - that's another one of my favorites. "Herbet West: Reanimator" that Jack mentioned is also another great one.

Once you've read Lovecraft it's kind of astonishing how many things in modern culture obviously draw from it.

The anthology I have includes "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", so I'll have that read soon! I wish I had found that hardcover anthology you mentioned though, because right now I'm just piecing together various anthologies and hoping there's not too much overlap. Getting through "The Haunter of the Dark" now.

Heh, I just spent a couple minutes trying to type in Nyarlathotep correctly to find out where I can get it.

Nyarlathotep is an odd story. I think it's one of his 'dream' stories, as in he had a dream and woke up and wrote it all down. It's more like a poem than a short story, actually.

Ditto on what everyone has said so far. Wondering if anyone had an opinion on August Delreth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Derleth), and his contributions to the mythos cycle.

I read "The Lurker at the Threshold" and had a love/hate relationship with that book. Loved to immerse myself into the HP mythos on the level of a book (rather than a short story)... though, it didn't feel quite the same.

I wish HP had some real novel-length material.

Hm. Isn't "At the Mountains of Madness" at least novella size? I don't know for sure, that's one of many on my list to get too.

As far as Derleth, I haven't read anything by him yet but I skimmed some stuff on Wikipedia. The idea of "good" and elemental deities sounds interesting, though something of a departure from Lovecraft's general idea of a nihilistic universe. I'll add that to the list as well!

I would tell you about my personal experiences with the Lovecraft Mythos... but I would probably get timecubed if I did.

It does not involve interpretive dance... but it should

So... nobody thinks his stories are the same stuff over and over again?

There's definitely a pattern to most of what I've read, and some of the first stories I read all ended with a horrific revelation all in italics!, but that doesn't unduly detract from my enjoyment of them. Most any fiction becomes formulaic after you've read enough of it, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the details and how it's written. Or at least, it's never stopped me

Some of them can be interesting, though some of them are really slow and tedious. I simply couldn't get through At the Mountains of Madness, for instance. He's not one of my favorite authors, but he's interesting to read so that you can see where the cosmic horror of today comes from.

At the Mountains of Madness is basically one of his short stories dragged out to 100+ pages, so yes, the build-up can be quite tedious, especially if you're good at guessing plot twists and are sat there going "come on, get to the money shot all in italics!". (Fun fact: my habit of sprinkling my forumversations liberally with italics springs partially from Lovecraft and partially from Tycho at P-A. But since he probably also acquired this habit from old Howard, you can lay all the blame at his door.) That said, I think Mountains is one of Lovecrafts best, with a very eerie atmosphere

Reanimator is also fairly long, by the way. But since it's spread out over a number of self-contained chapters (I think it was published in these segments, since there's a little recap of the previous portions at the beginning of each) it's less noticeable/tedious.

You might like Jeff Vandermeer's anthology "The New Weird". I haven't read it, but when talking to a friend about Lovecraft, he actually said:

"Lovecraft is great! A bit dry a times, but revelatory at others - the creatures are the best. Lovecraft bears a huge influence over New Weird fiction, but the difference lies in that where Lovecraft would stop before it got to much, would say that the said creature or horror could not be described for its mindshattering unknowableness, New Weird revels in the description of that terror, fully fleshing out the grotesquery of it all."

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Lovecraft.

I really love some of his stuff, particularly read aloud when I think it really comes into its own. But I also can't quite shake off the sense that it's really badly written. One of my particular gripes is his narrators, because he is completely unable to modify his voice, and his stock in trade of wonderful, chilling adjectives turn overblown and ridiculous. It's highly stylised and very repetitive and sometimes that works and sometimes it just falls flat. Definitely worth reading though, either way.