The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

This was my first foray into Lovecraft's work but it won't be my last! The audiobook is a collection of three tales, the novella The Call of Cthulhu and the shortstories The Festival and The Hound. This is a shorter selection than is found in the collection The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales which was what I orginally believed I was listening too. Overall I found them to be rich and exciting tales that captivated my attention and were filled with that exciting and suspenseful gothic style horror. Because I listened to this book rather than read it perhaps I would have missed it, at least at first, but Lovecraft has an unbelievable ability to write an attractive sentence. I'm not talking about the actual content of the sentence here, simply the sound and the rhythm the words make, rich and thick like syrup they swirl around your head in the most equisite of manners. They trip off the tongue with ease and yet hold substantial weight. At times it was extremely hard for me to pay attention to the stories because just listening to the lyric/poetic like quality of his word choices were all consuming.

Each story, a mere piece of the puzzle. "The dark woods will be cut down and the blasted heath will slumber far below blue waters whose surface will mirror the sky and ripple in the sun. And the secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep's secrets; one with the hidden lore of old ocean, and all the mystery of primal earth." (The Colour Out of Space) "As we hastened from that abhorrent spot, the stolen amulet in St. John's pocket, we thought we saw the bats descend in a body to the earth we had so lately rifled, as if seeking some cursed and unholy nourishment. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we could not be sure. So, too, as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we thought we heard the faint distant baying of some gigantic hound in the background. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and we could not be sure." (The Hound) "I see it - coming here - hell-wind - titan blur - black wings - Yog-Sothoth save me - the three-lobed burning eye...." (The Haunter of the Dark)

I love the creeps, gore and the all-around horror in books. I watch American Horror Story religiously, I live by the code of The Slayers that Joss Whedon laid out for us in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I research serial killers and studies of their psychological states and look forward to the month of October all year round. So as someone who would rather watch a scary movie or go through a museum filled to the tip of mass murder and corruption than go on some overly-dramatic, romantic date filled with dozens of roses and walks in the park, why doesn’t Lovecraft and King’s story telling agree with me? Don’t get me wrong, I love the theatrical adaptions of King so I am assuming that I would love them of H.P. Lovecraft as well, no matter how ironic his last name is. But I can’t seem to stop getting distracted while reading books written by the two dominate horror-writers. Whether it be a pretty butterfly fluttering a foot away or my mind wondering to the never-ending list of books I want and need to read. I just don’t feel like a story actually happened. I feel like an old man sat down and told me this horrible thing that he saw once or read about in a documentation his uncle left him, but not the how, the when, the where or the why. Just the what. I feel like a tentacle face is only scary with the story surrounding him. Without that, I am just imagining Davy Jones and Captain Jack Sparrow and then I crave a marathon of Pirates of the Caribbean. --- October reads of horror!