As an addition to the sci fi genre, LOA produced a little known author H. P. Lovecraft as a successor to Poe (though Lovecraft is no successor & no comparison to Poe either). 22 tales are listed here which ranged from the bizarre to sheer terror including E. Ts, & whatever else sci fi readers can get a hold of. His work is almost far too gratuitous leaving much to be desired but I will let the reader decide that. ( )

If you only wanted to invest in one really good hardcover of Lovecraft and don't require all the stories, this would be a good place to go. Sure we can all argue that this story is not here or that one shouldn't be, but overall this is a first rate single volume of Lovecraft's tales for those that aren't completists.

Although Peter Straub chose the stories to include, the texts are all from the definitive Arkham House/Joshi texts. There is a chronolgy, a few footnotes, and all the relevant source notes for the texts.

Contents aside, LoA volumes are all high quality: real cloth covers, head and tail bands, end papers, a marker ribbon and of course acid-free paper. LoA volumes I find are a perfect reading size: not too heavy and the books always lay flat without having to use an anvil to hold the book open on the table. ( )

I read this volume long ago. I have since replaced it with a more comprehensive collection of Lovecraft's works. This seems like a cash-grab by Library of America, rather than a proper treatment of this writer's stories. You can find a cheaper, larger complete tales edition by Chartwell classics. It's 1112 massive pages compared to the 800 here. It claims completeness but contains fewer than 60 works. If you're like me, and feel the need to really read all of this man's unsettling stories, you will need to look elsewhere - there are many ebook editions with rare stories, letters and collaborations. In truth, Lovecraft wrote many thousands of letters and too many stories to bind in one volume, though his fame increases with time, his talent can be gleaned from a few clever and disturbing examples. You don't really need to worry about the clunkier, earlier tales.

Examining his sentences, dialogue or character choices are not necessarily a productive or enlightening exercise. But letting the stories wash over your unprepared mind, sinking into the whirling storm of imagery he conjures, and dreaming and revisiting the haunting, unimaginable dilemmas his stories continually present, is well worth the headache of trying to understand him as a writer, which very few probably ever will.

Like Poe, and Blackwood, Lovecraft is occasionally genuinely frightening. The uniquely thrilling aspects of his supernatural storytelling are often imitated but rarely equaled. Once you have savored the wonder and elegance of his most famous works, check out Clark Ashton Smith, who was a poet through and through and Arthur Machen, who took on the same subjects, but wrote more for aesthetic appreciation. There are a lot of purveyors of the weird these days, but Lovecraft may forever remain the king on the 'mountain of madness.' ( )

Strange tales of strange things--but penguins grotesque? really. What is wrong with a person who describes penguins as grotesque? Now the giant blind albino penguins in the abyss, that's creepy, but ordinary penguins? Even plants seem to scare this guy--anything more undisciplined than a suburban lawn is described as overgrown.

I read this volume over the course of a couple winter months, just a little bit at a time, interspersed with lots of other things. If I hadn't, I might have found it a bit repetitive, as some motifs in Lovecraft's fiction tend to recur. As it was, while I noticed that, it didn't bother me. There are some truly great stories here: "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," "The Shadow over Innsmouth," &c. And the volume itself meets the always-high Library of America standards. One to keep on your shelves and dig back into on cold nights when you want the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up a little. ( )