The New Weird: Lovecraft collection

The New Weird: Lovecraft collection (Dunwich Horror, Call of Cthulhu, Innsmouth Incident, The Terrible Old Man, Herbert West:Reanimator, At The Mountains of Madness, The Horror at Red Hook)

            From my readings of various H.P. Lovecraft stories I came to realize that Lovecraft’s unique diction is at the same time a staple of his style, and one of the main reason’s he is not a more read author. While I understand that in his time his word choice and writing style wasn’t as out of place, they are still one of the hardest aspects of his work to get around. I must admit that several stories I simply couldn’t understand due to the complexity of his sentence structure and his word choice. However, once you have braved his vernacular and waded into the real meat of his works, you may find yourself absorbed by the compelling world, twisted plot, and very human characters. His tales tend to caution those pushing into the unknown; not because it is bad or against god, or for some other reason, but because we will only discover more of the unknown. His works really emphasize that questions answered only lead to more questions. Coming at an age of scientific discovery and exploration, Lovecraft simply imaged what discovers and horrors could await us. His characters all tend to be fairly privileged or at least well to do, and many are scientists or explores. They react in normal ways and they are hardly what we would call heroes. As they face more and more cosmic horror they lose their sanity and become more unpredictable and unhinged. They really do feel like people, though they are all young adult white males with a bit of money. All in all the strange nature of the horror the protagonist face and the compelling characterization lends to a fun and, most importantly, weird experience that I cannot recommend enough.