This was my first venture into H. P. Lovecraft's work and I think I was fortunate in choosing this one for my initial test drive.As a matter of Full Disclosure, generally I do not have any interest in the genre of Horror Fiction or any of its sub-specialty categories.Still, it seemed to me that I wasn't giving Lovecraft a chance and so I decided to give him a try, choosing The Mountains of Madness based upon a brief description of the story I came across while reading an article on Lovecraft in a copy of the Sunday New York Times.Perhaps the description reminded me of the movie "The Thing"; an old black and white sci-fi thriller I saw as a kid in the movies a hundred years ago and I just wanted to recapture that feeling, that "whatever" of the idea that a group of people are stuck in an ice and snow bound part of the world, at the mercy of a "Thing"!Feelings like that are not uncommon with seniors.Regardless, I found myself getting into the book pretty quickly on.There's an adjustment to make in reading Lovecraft to be sure; although the adjustment has its limits.There is a fine line between building tension and inducing a coma brought on by boredom.It is not simply the difference of the era in which the book was written compared to today but a denseness of description and text supporting that description that makes reading this story real work.It's the kind of work that many of today's readers will choose not to take on.There are references within the story to "things, creatures" and "entities" that apparently are detailed more fully perhaps in earlier works but as I am not, as stated initially, a big fan of the Horror genre, I probably will not read them; hence, my good fortune in choosing The Mountains of Madness.I'm glad I've had this read by H. P. Lovecraft although I think this may be my one and only.