>lovecraft complete work on amazon for free some time ago

General consensus is that the writing is somewhere between not-that-great and shite, but the mythos he established, the idea of humans and human gods as being insignificant beside the sheer awesome size and power of the cosmos, is what's important. So no, you don't have to read it. I have and it was mostly a waste of time. The Dream Cycle is cool though.

>>8669712
case of charles dexter ward,
lurking fear
erich zann
mountains of madness after reading poe's pym
shadow out of time
call of cthulhu
the thing on the doorstep

and read houllebecq's essay

>>8669712
What have you read?

Also: if you aren't into the occult, Lovecraft is much less interesting. The best part about reading him is all the strange details he is constantly inserting that are taken from or suggest ancient occult lore/practice. Aleister Crowley was a contemporary of his who was very interested in Lovecraft's writings, and believed Lovecraft was receiving truths and informations from beyond that even Lovecraft wasn't aware of. Many of Livecraft's ideas came in dreams, by his own admission, and in his personal letters he spoke of them being very terrifying. But of course, he didn't believe they were anything more than dreams. His short fragment "Azathoth" is interesting though because it literally depicts a simple, bookish man who lives in a dreary city, constantly looking at the stars, desperate for an escape from his boredom, when the stars notice his eyes, and begin sending him messages in dreams, visions, and whispers, of ancient things forgotten and terrible things to come. His short story Nyarlathotep paints an event that sounds almost like the appearance and rise of the antichrist. Crowley believed it was analogous to his experience he had with a diety known to him as Aiwass.

Lovecraft's Cthuhulu mythos has very interesting parallels with ancient Egypt and Norse mythology. Those mythos and the general occult is very interesting to me, and I like to read Lovecraft almost like he is revealing secrets from the Noosphere: lost events and hidden moments forgotten in time. Not with all stories of course, and this isn't something I believe whole heartedly, but I studied the occult first and read Lovecraft second, and found so many interesting references to minor characters in history, ancient gods and lost orders or rites, that never conflicted with my studies and always led me to interesting discoveries in the real world. I find it makes his writing come to life beyond his rather simple prose and sometimes repetitive descriptors.

I think it best to read the shorter works before the longer ones. Check these out:

>Dagon
>Polaris
>The Other Gods
>The Last Statement of Randolph Carter
>The Outsider
>The White Ship
>Azathoth
>Nyarlathotep
>The Nameless City
>The History of the Necronomicon
>The Rats in the Walls

After that, Call of Cthuhlu, Colour out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, Shadow over Innsmouth, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Just suggestions!

>>8669712
Memes, autism, the collaborative nature of the work (a bunch wrote letters to each other and wrote extra stories based on each others' ideas) and the creeping into reality which makes it like a cross between D&D and and ARG in some ways, and Dream Cycle.

lovecraft is fucking awesome, both as a person and author.

/lit/ is just as fucking memey as /pol/

>>8669817
Nice opinion. Whoever gave you it, I hope you *tipped* them well.

>>8669712
Probably my favourite author. Shame you can only meme.

>>8669712
It's free because Lovecraft is in the public domain.

I don't really like Lovecraft (IMO, the Colour out of Space is his only good story), but I can't help feeling bad for the guy. He wasn't even widely famous until after he had died, like Poe, and though today when he's widely regarded as one the most influentual sci-fi/horror writer of all time, anyone can quote/adapt/plagiarize him without consequence. He has no enterprize except in spirit.

I feel bad for him, the ugly, lantern-jawed, Adam-Sandler-lookin, anti-semite-who-married-a-jew, talentless faggot. Rest his soul.

>>8669769
What's the story where a dreamer visits a place where other dreamers are jailed?
That one was cool but I can't remember the name of it.

>>8669967
Kys