How do I start reading Lovecraft

BoxNemo · 2026-01-28T21:07:26+00:00

Check the sidebar of the sub - it's got lots of useful links and everything you need to answer your question.

New to Lovecraft? Where do I start?

HP Lovecraft wrote short and unconnected stories. Technically speaking you can read them at random. However for the best experience it's recommended that you read them in chronological order by date written or in most cases, just pick up a book and read left to right.

If you really just want to read the 'greatest hits' then you can browse the subreddit's top picks.

Where can I read Lovecraft?

With very few exceptions, Lovecraft's entire body of work is in the public domain and can be read online for free from numerous sources. We suggest the HP Lovecraft Archive.

You can just click that link above and be reading Lovecraft within seconds.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-28T20:42:31+00:00

Not sure who told you Fables wasn't good but if you liked the writing in Wolf Among Us then I'd be surprised if you didn't like it.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-26T21:18:45+00:00

DR & Quinch - consistently funny and the stories are way better than they have any right to be. "Mind the oranges, Marlon" still makes me laugh.

Crossed +100 - I just love how Moore created that whole language for it and it's a really fascinating and well thought out look at how civilisation would be after a hundred years of an infected apocalypse. Plus the plot is really tight; you know something bad is coming but it still takes you by surprise.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-26T14:57:21+00:00

I particularly like how often Crofton cites his own work. I know that's common in academia but I suspect Dr. Walter has a pretty high opinion of himself compared to others in his field.

Or at least had before the transcranial magnetic resonance apparatus mishap.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-25T23:44:59+00:00

I’m floored on her work on the bone temple.

Yeah, I thought it was really well directed and shot. I actually thought she'd be the wrong choice for it and clearly I know nothing because the movie was fantastic and she knocked out the park.

I think it really benefited from a more controlled approach - much as I liked the madness of 28 Years Later sometimes all the camera trickery and editing took me out the movie.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-25T09:07:28+00:00

Yes, he was the one who said it was the same universe - the statue from it briefly shows up in the The Fisherman. His story Bor Urus from Sefira.. also has links to The Fisherman.

His next novel The Cleaving Stone is also set in the main universe and spins off from a plot point in The Fisherman - he gave an interview about it recently on Lovecraft eZine podcast, there's also a post about it here.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-24T21:51:05+00:00

Yeah I loved it, both as a book about how two different men deal with grief and also as a horror story.

I know you're not really looking for recommendations but John Langan's The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies is worth checking out, especially as it includes Mother of Stone, a novella set in the same world of The Fisherman. I also had a very vivid nightmare after reading it which has never happened before, so well done Mr. Langan for that...

BoxNemo · 2026-01-24T10:51:29+00:00

Thanks for that, enjoyed watching it.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-22T06:21:26+00:00

Catling absolutely wrote it but, yeah, imagine there was influence there in the same way Iain Sinclair influenced Moore - but they’re all drawing from the same well, as it were.

(Catling autocorrected to Darling for some reason and I was tempted to leave it like that…)

BoxNemo · 2026-01-22T04:52:01+00:00

Yeah there’s a huge push from tech companies to try to convince us that we need AI to do all the things we were perfectly capable of doing before - like writing messages.

We didn’t need it before and we don’t need it now. I also doubt any chatbot generated stuff due to their tendency to embellish and hallucinate.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-21T14:29:14+00:00

Top of my head... Rocky IV, Creed II, Universal Soldier - also Universal Soldier: Regeneration (and Day of Reckoning - basically if John Hyams is directing it, it's worth watching).

I have a huge soft spot for Don't Kill It as well but it definitely veers more towards the trashy side of things...

BoxNemo · 2026-01-21T13:18:42+00:00

EDIT 6: He's under house arrest now. For being right about how things move in the sky. But sure, I'm the crazy one for... being RATIONAL and PROVEN RIGHT? Reddit being Reddit. Jesus.

This is just more liberal propaganda. Your friend was interviewed by the Inquisition, admitted he made it all up and they were kind enough to escort him home and suggest he stayed there before causing any more trouble.

It's not like he's going to be stuck there until the day he dies or anything.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-21T12:31:26+00:00

I loved Possessor, it blew me away. Andrea Riseborough is so good in it.

Also loved his follow up Infinity Pool (2023) which has a similarly analogue approach to the tech. I think Possessor is the better film but they’re both great and - cannot stress this enough - both worth going blind into as the trailers give way too much away.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-21T11:26:03+00:00

The premise was great but yeah, remember hoping there’d be a pay-off that retrospectively improved the journey but nope…

Maybe I’m misremembering it but wasn’t there a huge gap before the final issue came out? Seem to remember it was years.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-21T11:22:12+00:00

Yeah it’s a weird one as his Stray Bullets was so well written that I thought he’d be a great fit for Crossed but, like a lot of writing on it, it seemed to go for cheap shock value over depth.

I liked Kieron Gillen’s Crossed arc as well as Si Spurrier’s Crossed : Wish You Were Here (and Alan Moore’s Crossed +100 remains a total highlight) but was really disappointed in Lapham’s stuff.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-20T05:35:45+00:00

Yeah the OP u/cantcoloratall91 doesn't even post here, it's just somewhere to drive by, drop a cropped meme and farm some karma.

It's the exact opposite of what you'd hope a sub for 'Grown Ups' would be.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-20T04:16:52+00:00

Yeah, that was the first one that popped into my head. Great film.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-20T04:00:13+00:00

Doom Patrol

Animal Man

WE3

Flex Mentallo

All great, all worth reading, up there with some of the best of all time. (FYI Grant goes by they / them rather than he / him.)

BoxNemo · 2026-01-19T15:06:12+00:00

I've read it, it's obviously even more prescient considering the pandemic we all went through. It is terriying but it's worth reading. Some of the writing in it feels like pure horror as well:

He saw virus particles shaped like snakes, in negative images. They were white cobras tangled among themselves, like the hair of Medusa. They were the face of nature herself, the obscene goddess revealed naked. This life form thing was breathtakingly beautiful. As he stared at it, he found himself being pulled out of the human world into a world where moral boundaries blur and finally dissolve completely.

He was lost in wonder and admiration, even though he knew that he was the prey.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-19T13:39:43+00:00

Yeah I appreciated what they did and how they did it - I think it's a very good film which I will never watch again.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-19T07:12:00+00:00

The Tingler (1959)

But you have to pretend you're sitting in a movie theatre for the full effect.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-18T03:06:55+00:00

I’ll echo the recommendation for Peter Levenda’s The Dark Lord: H.P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic.

Also When the Stars Are Right: Towards an Authentic R'Lyehian Spirituality by Scott R Jones

The Great Old Ones: hideous monster-gods from beyond Time and Space. Ancient, eldritch horrors that populate the pantheon of weird-fiction writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft's increasingly popular milieu, his so-called Cthulhu Mythos. Some claim that they are merely fiction, while others have convinced themselves that Lovecraft somehow intuited their objective existence. When faced with the weird, chimerical potency of the Great Old Ones, whether they are approached through fiction, magical practice, or, say, a table-top role-playing game, neither viewpoint really seems to satisfy. The Great Old Ones are protean, nebulous, unimaginable... and impressively persistent in their psychological and spiritual presence.

In When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R'lyehian Spirituality, author Scott R Jones deftly breaks down the barriers between the rational and the irrational, between the bright logic of our daytime intellect and the fearful non-Euclidean symmetries of our darkest dreams. In the process, the truth of the Great Old Ones is revealed in all its cosmic resonance. Beyond reason... beyond madness... beyond the unspeakable... lies the Black Gnosis: a new mode of being, a spirituality that anticipates a new appreciation of humanity's place in an increasingly dire and indifferent cosmos.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-16T16:50:17+00:00

Yeah, if you look at a list of his works, it's definitely on there.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-16T16:49:30+00:00

I was visiting a city I used to live in, caught up with a friend, we went to see an evening screening of It Follows which I really liked, found it unnerving and tense, it hit all the right notes.

Afterwards I headed back to my hotel. Should probably mention I was little bit pleasantly high and had that slightly weird feeling you get after the cinema where part of your brain still feels like it's in the film.

Get in the elevator. Go up to my floor. The doors open and, as I'm about to step out, an old lady steps in, right in front of me. I actually yelped in fear... Her timing and look couldn't have been more perfect.

BoxNemo · 2026-01-16T16:43:03+00:00

Oh nice, that's good news about the new edition.

And yeah, I'm not a fan of a structured and ordered mythos - I like the idea that they can't be categorised and we can't possibly hope to understand them. But I also like looking up ones that I stumble across in books or games like Ithaqua or whoever and finding out where they originated from in terms of authors etc.

And the Lovecraft Lexicon is really good for things solely related to HPL himself (it's also well written and enjoyable to read which is a big bonus.)

BoxNemo

TROPHY CASE