Lots of Lovecraft Society (LOLS)

[Fragony]

Surely you jest? Poe, Twain, Fitzgerald, Salinger, even Stephen King would be better known. The first and last are more famous horror writers.

Ok to Stephen King, but the others aren't that well known really, they ought to be, but they aren't. Everybody has read it, but it's what everybody hates to read in English class.

I still have no idea what the Catcher in the Rye is supposed to be about.

[Cyclops]

....

Rats in the Walls next.

One of the absolute best.

"Sblood thou stinkard, I'll larn ye how to gust! Wouldst thou swinke me thilke this? Magna Mater, Magna Mater Atys!" I sometimes quote little bits to my brother, its a sort of code.

However he uses the N word again, albeit in the name of his cat.

Ok to Stephen King, but the others aren't that well known really, they ought to be, but they aren't...

? AFAIK Lovecraft is pretty unknown here in Oz, people know about Arkham from Miller's Batman etc. Maybe he's better known in the USA and Europe. Definitely less known than the others I mentioned, people look at me blankly if I mention Cthulhu (except this one Lascar sailor...)

... Everybody has read it, but it's what everybody hates to read in English class.

I still have no idea what the Catcher in the Rye is supposed to be about.

I think it was a fashionable bit of pop from the '50s that somehow was made an icon-they must've been light on for geniuses after the war. I think Lovecraft is more in touch with genuine human experience. I mean, who hasn't grown up in an inbred Catskill community where insane wizards breed their daughters to alien gods, producing prodigious and violently dangerous offspring fed on cows blood (if not whole cows) who must be tracked down with powder of Ibn Ghazi and the Voorish sign? F-f-f-father! Yog Sothoth!

[Peasant Phill]

Some time ago I've read 'Call of Cthulu'. I liked it but I doubt it was Lovecraft masterwork. What would you guys recommend I read?

[Cyclops]

Some time ago I've read 'Call of Cthulu'. I liked it but I doubt it was Lovecraft masterwork. What would you guys recommend I read?

Shorter stories: Rats in the Walls and Dreams in the Witch House. To me these are his best horror stories, pretty tight and with nasty punchlines. Plenty more decent ones this length.

Longer Stories (if you didn't like CoCthen these may not suit either) At the mountains of Madness is the big daddy, sort of ties in a lot of the Cthulhu Mythos. .. I guess there's the long one about Joseph Curwen (is it the case of Charles Dexter Ward?). These build and build, but there's a lot of mood creation and less of the "crap! a nameless horror!"

In between size we have the Dunwich horror, Shadow over Innsmouth, those ones. They can be quite good too, I like them for the details about the Miskatonic world.

I liove the fantasy stories, Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, and its related stories about King Kuranes, the cats of Ulthar and so on, bu they have less horror, and its more stylised...I was tempted to give an example but I won't spoil it for you. Give the Dream Quest a burl, its a lovely bit of Dunsany-like fantasy, pre-Tolkien faery tale stuff. i suppose the Outrsider straddles the fantasy and horror genre.

The silver key stories get a bit out of control, but cross over back into steadier ground as a horror tale.

[Conqueror]

I liove the fantasy stories, Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, and its related stories about King Kuranes, the cats of Ulthar and so on, bu they have less horror, and its more stylised...

It frequently goes way beyond stylized, getting outright trippy surrealistic. Seriously, you'd think the man was doing opium when he wrote the DQoUK. That's what makes it so awesomely weird though. There's for example this scene where

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

the protagonist escapes from THE MOON by riding on a pack of talking cats, that are able to travel through space by literally leaping from Earth to Moon and back.

[Fragony]

Some time ago I've read 'Call of Cthulu'. I liked it but I doubt it was Lovecraft masterwork. What would you guys recommend I read?

Everything really, I would advice you to only read it when you are in the proper mood.

[Peasant Phill]

Everything really, I would advice you to only read it when you are in the proper mood.

And what mood would that be?

[Fragony]

And what mood would that be?

Well in the mood for Lovecraft! On a creepy stormy night of course. You could call him a one trick pony, oh no ancients! the horror! ; and have a point. But Lovecraft has the distinct quality to truly freak me out, it's so sick, it just hits a nerve. The horror creeps up on you, you feel uneasy. I really cannot think how the Color from outer Space could be more disgusting, people being drained from life, it doesn't sound like much but it's such a horrible mental image when Lovecraft does it, you won't forget it any soon I promise.