Call of Cthulhu library

[Brian G Turner]

I remember when I played the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game - must be 30 years ago now - the handbook had a list of books relating to the Cthulhu Mythos that could damage your character's sanity. While some, like the Necromonicon, were clearly invented, others were included that were important works of anthropology.

I remember making some effort to read books from that list - I already had an interest in mysticism and the occult even before reading Lovecraft, simply because I've always been interested in belief systems.

Anyway, for my classics course in September one of the reading books we need is The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer, which happily I still have a copy of. It was an interesting read at the time, and I found it more engaging than The Witch Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray. However, I don't recall any other titles.

So does anyone have a copy of the books from the Call of Cthulhu library? It would be interesting to go through the list again.

 

[Toby Frost]

I read a fair chunk of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe years ago and it was moderately interesting but pretty dry.

I still find the forbidden books to be one of the hardest elements of Lovecraft to get. Why would reading the Necronomicon drive you insane? Surely you'd have to believe its contents first, and where would the proof be? I find it very hard to get my head around that. I always thought I'd just dismiss it as crazy ravings, unless the act of reading cast some kind of spell that damaged the reader.

Incidentally, the closest things I have ever seen to Lovecraft's books was a collection of H.R. Giger's art (there is one actually called Necronomicon) and The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, a book that I probably lost sanity points in reading from cover to cover. Imagine randomly mixing up pages from a gory horror novel, the confessions of a drug addict and hard gay porn, then sticking them together in no clear order...

 

[Pyan]

...The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, a book that I probably lost sanity points in reading from cover to cover.

Kudos!
I got about 50 pages in, and thought "This is rubbish compared with his Tarzan books..." and then checked the author's name again.