school me in love craft oh mitey ilXoR!!

I can't ever get past his clunky prose, I'm afraid.

(also txting)

(on a mass observation note: no one IRL says them any more)

isn't MoM considered a cthulu mythos story? it certain talks about the old ones and tentacles and mentions the Cth word:

http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/mountainsofmaddness.htm

""Objects are eight feet long all over. Six-foot, five-ridged barrel torso three and five-tenths feet central diameter, one foot end diameters. Dark gray, flexible, and infinitely tough. Seven-foot membranous wings of same color, found folded, spread out of furrows between ridges. Wing framework tubular or glandular, of lighter gray, with orifices at wing tips. Spread wings have serrated edge. Around equator, one at central apex of each of the five vertical, stave-like ridges are five systems of light gray flexible arms or tentacles found tightly folded to torso but expansible to maximum length of over three feet. Like arms of primitive crinoid. Single stalks three inches diameter branch after six inches into five substalks, each of which branches after eight inches into small, tapering tentacles or tendrils, giving each stalk a total of twenty-five tentacles."

i am currently in my second decade of trying to finish Dagon and Other Tales so... 8)

Regarding b. get one Call of Cthulhu and Dagon

also
http://www.toyvault.com/cthulhu/images/cthulhusmall.jpg

!

at least "noisesome" gets some play in tolkien

and plus (andrew) "eldritch"

the review btw is quite large and pleading, in the most recent new york review of books, and also includes this grebt non-sequitamous puff line: "Sure to help reinforce Lovecraft's place in the American literary canon. Every fan will want to own this landmark volume."

Yes, if you use it all the time.

(bollocks I've forgotten the word for "very very big" that he uses continuously, particularly for doorways)

The problem with them these days is that they are shaggy dog stories where everyone these days is very familiar with the dog, and its pedigree (and has been bitten by its pups (sorry)). Reading a lot of the stories I was always going "Yes, it's going to be a chthuloid horror, get on with it".

(but i have hardly read enough to judge: "the shunned house" is pretty much flawless)

(there's actually a pretty interesting piece - real actual review-essay i mean - on conan doyle as literary innovator in ref.sherlock holmes) (which mentions xena and buffy!)

(part one is on-line but part two - which is better - is not)

D: Dreams In The Witch House.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0586063226/qid=1109257944/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_11_1/026-4122893-6431639
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0586063242/qid=1109257836/ref=pd_ka_2/026-4122893-6431639
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0586063234/qid=1109257944/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_11_3/026-4122893-6431639

but others exist (amazon has a whole bunch)

In America at least S. T. Joshi is seen as the guy who finally presented ol' H. P. in the 'best' way possible, first with a series of buffed-up editions for Arkham and then via two paperback collections which you might want to look into, Mark -- they're annotated editions, the only kind which I know exist. A reasonably good if by no means at all complete selection of tales (including "The Shunned House," which has a lot of info about Rhode Island you'll be tickled by), though nothing in his Dunsany-styled vein is included, to my memory.

M. R. James, of course, is peerlessly fantastic.

ihttp://www.sonic.net/~jason/dream/dq2-gaunts.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0440506603/qid=1109259071/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/102-2947147-4188134?v=glance&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0440508754/qid=1109259071/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/102-2947147-4188134?v=glance&s=books

You can get 'em both for cheap used and the pound's strong, go for it.

Having said all this, let me quote some stuff from the true underrated writing genius of 20th century America (or one of them at least), Avram Davidson:

Avram Davidson wrote a hilarious review of THE SURVIVOR AND OTHERS, a posthumous 'collaboration' between HPL and August Derleth. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January, 1963, the review is quoted at length in L. Sprague de Camp's LOVECRAFT: A BIOGRAPHY:

". . . In short, Howard was a twitch, boys and girls, and that's all there is to it.
"Of course, August Derleth feels different. August Derleth is an incredibly active, incredibly prolific writer who lives in Wisconsin and has written somethings like 811 books under his own name; the pseudonyms, who cares? In a way, August Derleth may be said to have invented H.P. Lovecraft, having rescued him from well-deserved obscurity in the Weird Tales files.
". . . We all have our time-bound longings. Horace Gold [former editor of Galaxy magazine] would love to have made love to Nefertiti. I would give lots and lots to have poured tea for Dr. Johnson. And August Derleth, I feel it in my bones, would have sold his soul to an Eldritch Horror to have collaborated with H.P. Lovecraft. And now he has.
". . . As I say, Derleth tries hard, but he doesn't quite turn the trick, because he is as sane as they come and
Lovecraft is as nutty as a five-dollar fruit-cake."

Avram did however make numerous allusions to H.P. Lovecraft in such stories as "Something Rich and Strange" (where computer programming assistance from Miskatonic University helps track down the elusive mermaid) or "Death of A Damned Good Man" (where his narrator muses about the authorship of the famed Lovecrafty couplet "That is not dead which can eternal lie / And after strange eons, even Death may die").

In "The Redward Edward Papers," we find:

"Roy Keith King" is the collective nom de plume (and perhaps the collective unconscious) of the so-called Bloor Brothers.
[. . .] "Rugose, squamous, amorphous; Lovecraft must have known them personally."

In "Adventure in AutoBiography: Kindly Hold Out Your Right Index Finger," an unpublished manuscript dated February 1993, Avram's revision of portions of Dragons in the Trees on the ethnography, language and history of the Black Caribs involves an American anthropologist from "Miskatonic University" seeking blood samples to prove some strange theory.

In a letter to Reno Odlin dated Sept 5 1991:

"LSdeC had a wonderful title: "Eldritch Yankee Gentleman" [title of essay on HPL in Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers]. Doubleday, claiming that "customers would not know the word 'eldritch'," changed it to "Lovecraft/A Biography." Catchy title, eh? Can you imagine anyone wanting to read it who didn't know what eldritch means? . . . Love the Nyarlathotep letterhead!"

Avram OTM here, and I'm afraid I think that the same goes for most Mythos writers and disciples. For me, best contemporary is Clark Ashton Smith, outstanding modern disciple is Thomas Ligotti.

Best HPL? You probably need it all. There are plenty of good cheap 3-PB sets, mostly variations on the theme established by the Arkham house collected works, with the most 'accessible' stories upfront in Vol 1.

Me, I've reached the point where I love dubious fragments like 'The Thing in the Moonlight' most of all.