Books

Nice, yeah Fahrenheit 451 is easily my favorite of the bunch. Ray Bradbury's passion for the human experience is infectious, and he has a way of elevating the idea of reading to an almost spiritual level 😅.

For Lovecraft, try grabbing his complete works as an e-book if you can. It's usually only $2 or $3 dollars on e-book sites and will let you sample around in the stories.

Here's a few things that a might make the reading more enjoyable (at least it did for me.)

1. Lovecraft was a very feaful, anxious person. His stories were a way that he tried to deal with fear of the unknown.
2. There is a rythym to his writing: he spends a long time circling around an idea, painting a picture of mundane facts that don't mean much on their own, but then towards the end of the paragraph or the chapter he will drop one or two sentences that cast an eery, unsettling light on those mundane descriptions. Those payoff sentences were great, I was always on the edge if my seat waiting for them.
3. The story is not so much to tell the story itself, but to try to communicate a feeling or emotion to the reader.

Here's a few stories to dip a toe in to:

The Call Of Cthulhu At the risk of sounding a bit front door, this is probably the best starting place. It may not be the best of his stories, but it is not too long or overworked, and has a nice array of the characteristic Lovecraft style. You'll probably be able to tell if you're onboard after this one.

At The Mountains Of Madness This is the one I started with. Its very long and incredibly dense in the beggining especially. I remember actually skipping the introductory set up, up to about page 15 😄. Now I've gone back and appreciated the world building, but goodness H.P. gets wordy. It is a fantastic story and might be my favorite despite it's density.

The Lurking Fear This one crosses more from suspense in to horror. He doesn't get too dark, but this one definitely is meant to get you on an instinctual fear level.

The Shadow Out Of Time This one I read later on, and it is another good example of his world building and story construction. Interesting premise and good descriptive elements.

I took a look at my book shelf, here's a few more books that I've really enjoyed over the years:

"An Unsuitable Job For A Woman" - P.D. James, Mystery

"The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail - Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, Script of a stage play that is sold in book form

Vernor Vinge, Author - mostly science fiction Any of his books are good, notably Deepness In The Sky and Rainbows End. Deepness in the sky is technically a sequel, but I read it out of order and still enjoyed it. "Fire Upon The Deep" is the prequel. It was good, but a little more scattered. I had a harder time visualizing the scenes.

EDIT: spelling