I tried reading a few of his short stories, I saw a ghost story, and one that I couldn't get into long enough to find out what it was about.

What's the good stuff? and is all of his writing so dry? maybe I'm just not a fan of his writing style.

the colour out of space

shadow over innsmouth

I recommend that you read one or more of the following stories:

At The Mountains of Madness (one of his longest stories, but that doesn't say much)

The Whisperer in the Darkness

The Call of Cthulhu

The Dunwich Horror

The Shadow Over Innsmouth

The Shadow Out of Time

And yes, his style is quite old-fashioned. But I still suggest that you give him a try.

 I was drawn into the game by the artwork. I have tried several of his stories as audiobooks. I could not finish At the mountains of madness because it was too boring. I don't understand. I enjoy the world of Lovecraft but not so much his writing so far. I liked the short story in the asylum packs. Can you recommend some stories to me. Especially those that feature the characters and places of the Hastur faction. One story I liked was the one that features Erich Zann.

if you like the hastur id check out robert chambers, the king in yellow. its a pretty good collection of stories that are more in key with the hastur stuff. lovecraft didnt write much on issue of hastur and such. dream quest has an encounter with a high priest or something and a few stories mention hastur.

My personal favorites are

The Shunned House

The Statement of Randolph Carter

Are the books and writings in any kind of order ? Is there like a guide book or source book of some kind ?

mischraum.de said:

My friend also found the story hard to read through.  I loved it, but I can see where people are coming from.  From that logic The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is horrible.  I've only read a few pages of it, but I simply could not get into it.

As for stories to get into, I'd suggest Dagon.  That story is one of his most powerful and yet one of his shortest.  The Color out of Space is also an excellent read.  It's really one of his best stories that plays off of his theories on horror.

I recently introduced the CoC card game to my girlfriend and she's fallen in love with it. She seems to be into the characters and is looking for one of the books to read. I haven't really read much of Lovecraft's works, just wondering what some of you might think the fairer gender might like more.

I just got my hands on a collection for short stories, but I haven't gotten too far into it. It has 16 different ones though, so she could probably choose what interests her.

I also watched a movie called "The Call of Cthulhu" which a friend of mine told me followed the story almost perfectly I am a girl, and I thought it was really interesting

It was filmed recently, but is filmed as a silent film and let me tell you, the "special" effects make it entertaining no matter if you are into Lovecraft or not!

After reading a lot of H.P. Lovecraft's stuff from various publishers I think the collection from Penguin Publishing "The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories" is the best I have bought. It has a good selection starting with some of the easier to manage stories all the way to the popular and lengthier stories like "Call of Cthulhu" the "Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "The Whisperer in Darkness". It's a fair priced collection about $12 bucks. I let my girl borrow it and she read the ones she liked and gave it back to me so that is probably where I would start.

Yeah you either like Lovecraft's style of writing or you don't, I never found it dry, don't think Ive ever read a bad Lovecraft story, the first one I ever read was The Outsider, and my jaw literally drooped at the climax, the only other writer, not that Ive read many, to effect me in that way is Philip K. Dick
 

I run a H.P. Lovecraft reading and discussion group and this is a very common problem that people have with Lovecraft. He isn't an easy guy to read and some of his stuff is really... Bad... I'm a huge fan but I have to say that some of his stuff is damn near impossible to read.

I would say that the best stories to start with are... Pickmans Model, The Picture in the House and The Outsider. All of those are short and sweet. Easy enough to wrap your head around and aren't filled with a bunch of "eldrich" vocabulary. 

A good place to start would be a 'Lovecraft' story called 'The case of Charles Dexter Ward'

 The HPLS did some great audio versions, At the Mountains of Madness is amazingly well done in the style of an old radio broadcast.

A while back I copied over a list of recommended reading presented in Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu RPG manual into a similar thread. Check it out here.

If you just plain can't get into his style of writing, you can still enjoy the benefits of having read them by listening to the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast at hppodcraft.com, The entertaining, light-hearted discussions give a complete overview of each story, as well as lots of insights to themes, characters & other aspects that even a seasoned fan may have missed.