At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror (1936)

I did not enjoy this book at all. It is written from the perspective of a scientist who has experience a horrible event on an expedition to Antarctica. The book read like a science journal (probably intentionally) that I ended up skimming it. When I got to the scary part, I wasn't exactly sure what was happening. This is included in the 1001 books to read before you die list, but I have to really question it as a choice. ( )

This is my first experience reading Lovecraft - who is touted on the back cover as a forerunner of Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Anne Rice. I enjoy the horror genre in spurts and needed a spooky fix for October.

This book is a compilation of short stories. I have to say that the title story "At the Mountains of Madness" was the longest and my least favorite. It felt over-written to me. I was interested in where the story was going, but the lengthy descriptions were distracting. The second story "The Shunned House" was good and mildly creepy. My favorite of these collected tales was the third story "The Dreams in the Witch House"; a story of a mathematician who has 'dreams' of a witch and her familiar while renting a room in the house she once occupied. The fourth ("The Statement of Randolph Carter") is extremely short - almost too short. It's almost as if Lovecraft can't find the balance for the right length of a short horror story.

I am not sure if I will read more Lovecraft based on these short stories, but I did like them overall. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2011/09/review-of-at-mountains-of-madness-and.h... ( )

Surprisingly, I'd never read a Lovecraft book before. A lot of interesting stuff here, though nowadays, our more sophisticated knowledge of Antarctica makes much of it ludicrous (6-foot tall, blind penguins?). Also, while it's a short book, it is way longer than it needed to be

I was not thrilled with "At the Mountains of Madness." The story of an Antarctic expedition that discovers a madness-inducing mountain with horrifying creatures was overwrought. I mean, how many pages do you really need to describe the strange (and again with the madness-inducing) architecture. The story could have done with some serious cutting of redundant paragraphs. But it wasn't entirely without merit and had some moments, where the action moved at enough of a pace to keep me reading.

The second story, "The Shunned House," was better, in part because it was shorter and therefore more concise. Still a lot of overworked descriptions and very little dialog, but the ending image was awesome and one that has sparked my imagination.

"The Dreams in the Witch House" was good, about a man obsessed with a story of an old witch, who claimed to know secret geometries that allowed her to bend dimensional space. Lovecraft clearly loved the theme of insanity-inducing angles and architecture (along with bizarre old ladies, which also appeared in "At the Mountains of Madness," and again with the labored, overworked descriptions.

As for the finale story, "The Statement of Randolph Carter," I won't bother to give a description, and will just say, lame.

I don't find myself eager to read any more of Lovecraft's work (also considering what I've learned about his pervasive racism). Though I will probably also read, "The Call of Cthulhu," because I love the Cthulhu pop-culture cult following that has popped up all over the the internet. ( )