Ot-This LoveCraft Dude

[atul]

Theonlystd said:
Is there some order i should read them in to keep confusion down?

Keeping the confusion down is not the point of reading Lovecraft. :>

Most of his work are very much stand-alone short stories, so don't worry about continuity. You'll soon see why that is. I think about the only longer story by Lovecraft is "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", which is a good read if you want to start with something longer.

[Quietly]

I think he has 3 collections of short stories (but only 2 books worth of them, some collections overlap)... I would advise reading nightmares and dreamscapes

[Archonsod]

atul said:
I think about the only longer story by Lovecraft is "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", which is a good read if you want to start with something longer.

Herbert West : Reanimator is also fairly lengthy IIRC. There isn't an order to the stories, but some reference others - Pickman crops up a few times. The dream stories also tend to cross reference a bit.

There's lot's of non-Lovecraft Cthulhu-mythos stuff that I haven't read. The main one that I have read is the fantasy masterworks series edition of the works of Clark Ashton-Smith. This includes several stories that are clearly set in the Cthulhu mythos and actually introduces some entities that Lovecraft later mentioned in his work. Clark Ashton-Smith's work has more of a fantasy rather than a horror feel to it. I like both genres and I heartily recommend both authors.

Out Of Time has just been re-released. Should recieve my copy tomorrow.
August Derleth has his own take on the Mythos. Brian Lumley has also written a few decent mythos related books, most of which are quite good. In the House of Cthulhu is particularly interesting, being a cross of Cthulhu and Conan for most of the stories Lin Carter is another decent Lovecraftian author, though he tends to be somewhat derivative. Then again, if you like Lovecraft this won't be a problem.