The book that started the Cthulhu mythos! What more reason do you need to read it?

If you read Stross, or Gaiman, or Bradbury, or practically any science fiction, this is a must-read to understand the development of the genre.

Sounds at first to be dated at best or clumsy and naively egocentric at worst--but is neither. What it lacks in the prosaic beauty and felicity so apparent in Forster's novels it more than makes up for with an insight that rivals that found in the best of H.G. Well's short fiction.