Just getting into Lovecraft. Already read Mountains of Madness, but what is the best order to read his stories in? Which are some of his best works and which are ones I should avoid?
>>8171010
Probably his more famous earlier stories
Then his middle epics
Then his pretty good later works
You can read them in any order, really, I would stick to shorter stories first like Rats In The Walls. Read all of his really great long stories like Call of Cthluhu and Dunwhich Horror. Mix it up with long and short, old and new.
Defiantly read all the short Dream Cycle stories before diving into Dream Quest For Unknown Kadath. Then read the two short sequeals that come after that one.
>>8171010
I feel like i've answered this question ten times in /lit/ but ok...
No special order but i would recommend you now read The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
He is barely readable. Cool ideas he presented and the sort of atmosphere he is known for are part of insufferable stories with bad storytelling, which makes them great for usage in movies and video games, but this literature itself is just appaling.
Some things really do age badly.
>>8171010
You can read his stories in any order barring the ones with Randolph Carter (Silver Key, Unknown Kadath, Through The Gates of the Silver Key).
Best works would be Call Of Cthulhu, Dunwich Horror, Rats In The Walls, Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Outsider.
Some stories people won't mention will be The Temple, The Nameless City, The Hound. They are shorter but intense in their story building.
People say Colour Out Of Space is great but I don't like it at all.
>>8171204
>read all the short Dream Cycle stories before diving into Dream Quest For Unknown Kadath. Then read the two short sequeals that come after that one.
These would be the 3 Randolph Carter stories I mentioned earlier.
>>8173533
He didn't write literature, dude is genre fiction for sure but he was pretty good at it.
His monsters/mythos are original like you said and the atmosphere is good.
His stuff is not good for movies at all idk where you got that idea. Pretty much none of stories have been well adapted to the screen because people just take usual gory horror or jump scare horror and add a tentacle monster to it and that's not what his stories are at all.
