I started reading this book my freshman year of college and it took me until today to finally get through it. That’s for a couple of reasons. A) It’s really long and I felt like reading someone else at different points and B) a lot of it is really tedious and/or repetitive. Lovecraft’s influence on the horror genre cannot be overstated. His highs are incredible—Call of Cthulhu, Color Out of Space, the Outsider, Cats of Ulthar, and the Case of Charles Dexter Ward all come to mind—but his lows are pages of overly worded descriptions of caverns and beings so unfathomable they cannot be described (yet are described endlessly). The other undeniable aspect of Lovecraft is his overt racism, xenophobia, and overall bigotry. Stories like Rats in the Walls and the Shadow Over Innsmouth (among others) are marred by his own personal beliefs on those different from himself, and his fear and hatred of other races becomes clear in many of his narratives. There’s not a whole lot to say on Lovecraft that hasn’t already been said. There’s definitely some stuff worth reading, some stuff that can be skipped, but all should be read with an awareness of his role in the history of horror and his own personal beliefs when writing each story.