/lit/ - Literature

Why people, readers included, can just think of Chtulhu when you talk about Lovecraft?

Hey /lit/ I have a question.

I've always wanted to get into H.P. Lovecraft but I don't know where to begin. Is there a certain order I should read the stories in?

I had a pretty interesting dream last night. I'm not the type of person to ascribe meaning to dreams, but I do enjoy hearing about and sharing sufficiently interesting ones.

I was in a bathroom in someone else's house, using the sink. I'm pretty certain the dream starts before this, but I can't recall anything earlier than this. I looked up into the mirror, and behind me is a shockingly morbidly obese man with deep, brown bags around his eyes. He's laying in this sort of Victorian tub, staring listlessly back at me. I turn around. He isn't there, and I found that the bathroom actually has a modern tub with a shower head which faces in a different direction than my fat friend's tub. I turn to the mirror, and he's still there; I turn back again, and he still isn't. I screamed, and someone I don't recognize comes to check on me. They seem genuinely worried about me, but are totally confused when I describe what I had seen. I wake up at this point and it takes me a few moments to disassociate with my dream, it was so real that I was genuinely a little terrified.

This is probably talked into the ground here, but I've just started reading Lovecraft. Really enjoying all that I've read so far.

Have finished Cool Air, The Nameless City, Memory, The Tomb, Colour Out of Space, The Street and At the Mountains of Madness.

I want to start the Cthulu/Dream mythos (if I have not already), but am wondering if there is a preferred way to read it, because I've heard that several of his stories tie into one another.

Should I start with The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Other Gods or Nyarlathotep? Or something else? Is there an order in which they should be read?