The Call of Cthulhu

I have been seeing a lot of stories on YouTube pop up on my Algorithm so I wanted to read the book to see what the fascination with it was

This story is of course a classic and probably Lovecraft's most famous work, though personally I enjoyed The Shadow Over Innsmouth's greater immediacy. The Call of Cthulhu gives the reader a detached feeling, since the narrative is conveyed through multiple framing devices (e.g. the narrator is relating his uncle's writings, which includes an encounter with a Louisiana policeman, who tells a tale told to him by a cult member named Castro, who learned of Cthulhu from his experiences in China . . . and so on.) That's part of the charm, however, as if Lovecraft's overwrought purple prose. The most absurd part in the story was a quoted Australian newspaper article written in Lovecraft's peculiar, xenophobic voice. What kind of journalist would use the phrase, 'a queer and evil-looking crew of Kanakas and half-castes'? Mostly, the story is important for the genre it birthed, rather than its own merits. It's still a good read, though.

Great audiobook!

H.P. LoveCraft tells a great story or horror and fight. A friend recommended this book to me and I can say it was a great short read. It makes one imagination stir up little horrors and makes going to sleep a little tougher. Give this book a read it’s short and Halloween is around the corner. It is a classic that will entertain and possibly scare you.

About this version: + Print quality is surprisingly good. Print on demand plus low price, but it was fine. - No page numbers. Nuts, because there's a table of contents (well, the 3 parts to the story...) with page numbers up front. The story: --- It's a classic, but it sucks. I cannot comprehend what made this a classic. If this is HP Lovecraft's seminal work, I refuse to read anything else of him. Then again, Douglas Coupland's classic Generation X was in my experience also one of his lesser works. I have zero interest in how "it spawned a genre" or how I should perceive it, it is just an odd style (2nd/3rd/4th hand narration of stuff that happened and was seen and interpreted by others). Is it to mask the author's inability to create suspense, actual horror/terror? In essence it's a continuous spewing of events with insanely bombastic language to mask that it's in essence a short made-up timeline. And it feels like a rush. I've seen descriptions saying it has a "continuous arc" and things like that, but in a way, so does a newspaper weather forecast, or a police report. The bombastic language is also just a method for snobbish people to feel good about themselves that they know all the words in the first go. Don't pat yourself on the back too hard, it's not that old yet that the context doesn't make it clear. And this is from someone who read Milton's Paradise Lost, which is a near endless barrage of old English in all kinds of fancy forms, but at least that's a story that, once you get into it, does move you. Even for a non-native English speaker. Milton himself said that he wrote it when he was younger and the language was just too much. His later works are much more accessible. The Cthulhu story does nothing to move, but leans very very heavily on the elaborate language. Eloquence to measure to size of one's pipi? In my experience a good story either has characters that move one in some way (although one can argue that I was moved to hatred for the narrator...), or can convey a setting, atmosphere or feeling well. This does neither. It feels rushed. Characters get introduced, dates get mentioned, but they don't matter. Apparently all were horrified by something, but that is not conveyed well at all, rather than descriptions in the style of "fact, fact, fact, and it was horrific!", "blah blah blah, monstrous.", etc. There are authors that are fairly "atmospheric" and need hundreds of pages (hello Haruki Murakami! Excellent stories by the way), but this is the other extreme. 50 or 60 some pages, and I was dreading every page. Don't kiss your English teacher/professor's boots and swoon at this, read it on its own merits. Maybe I could call it a page turner, but only because I wanted it to be over.

The book that truly started it all. This literary masterpiece proves multiple things. Firstly, the notion that a book must be lengthy to be worthwhile, at only three chapters and forty-nine pages, this book still offers a haunting account of horrors that man could ever conceive. Secondly, its journal format makes the reader feel so immersed, as if you were truly reading an actual document or journal entry. This format adds a level of fright that could not be achieved in a third-person perspective. This book is a true example of minimalistic horror that is not seen too often in modern horror novels. Even with a short length and minimal amounts of speech, this book still instills chills into the reader. I highly recommend this book.

If you like the weird fiction genre at all, you are going to love the H.P. Lovecraft classic. Despite some obvious flaws; prose so purple it figuratively stains the page, and Lovecraft's racial bias (bad even by the standard of the day), this remains a surreal masterpiece. It is way way chunked up and like so many of Lovecraft's stories human beings are absurdly insignificant. We learn little of the narrator but though he is inclined to hysteria (like so many in the story), he is quite relatable. Whether in New England, New Zealand or Norway, the late Professor Angell's nephew is in dogged pursuit of the truth, no matter how much it messes with his head. Cthulhu (himself?) remains an enigma; only glanced at by a mad sailor but central to everything in the story and possibly the universe. Best read with brandy, late at night by candlelight.

This is horror served in a concentrated form with only arc and no filler. The style , the tone and the pace couldn't have been kept better

Buena lectura a pesar de que es muy corta. Te deja con ganas de leer las demás obras de H.P. Lovecraft.

An amazing book

Arrived in time, in mint conditions. The Call of Cthulhu is a short story but it is very interesting! I fell in love with the videogame of the same name and had to buy this little book to read the actual story. I was not disappointed. The book is not for everyone because it uses the old fashioned writing and words which can make this short work a bit boring or uninteresting. Therefore, be ready!