Like a lot of "complete" collections, like the Complete Emily Dickinson, it's a testament that not everything a master writes is gold. You probably already know the "good" Lovecraft: "Call of Cthulhu," "At the Mountains of Madness," "Rats in the Walls," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," "The Curious Case of Dexter Ward," "The Whisperer in the Darkness," "The Shadow Out Of Time," "Pickman's Model," and a few others.

But this collection is filled with a lot of junk I think Lovecraft would not be keen on people reading. Unfinished works, experiments, and prototypes of stories he'd do much better later. It's a maddening slog through messy drab (like the baffling "The Transition of Juan Romero") to get to Lovecraft at his best.

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The HP Lovecrraft Society's audiobook version is serviceable and well-read (and about the most practical way to muscle through)...but there is an annoying habit in the longer stories where it plays the "bum buuumm" sound effect at the end of chapters...even if the chapters ended pretty ho-hum.