I
highly recommend you check out the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast. It was recommended in a prior thread on the other forum about Lovecraft:
http://hppodcraft.com/
The two hosts are super nerdy but entertaining and really know their stuff. And, if they don't know it, they have guests on or do a bunch of research. They handle a story per podcast (longer stories are split up into multiple episodes) and they're like these pseudo audiobook/commentary (they have guests every episode who read passages from the stories, some of them are FANTASTIC) walkthroughs. I've read most of Lovecraft's more known stories, but these guys go through every one, even collaborations with other authors. If you're not into that, you can just download the episodes you're interested in.
Lovecraft can be kind of intimidating, plus his writing style can be, uh,
verbose at times. These podcasts act as a nice primer or recap, though I of course recommend you read the stories first.
They also provide all kinds of recommendations for books and other media to check out.
EDIT: regarding Lovecraft's racism, it's absolutely something you can't ignore. It does creep into the back of your mind in stuff like Innsmouth. On one hand, he's describing a race of fish people, which are...yeah, gross, but you could easily switch them out for any other foreign group and it becomes an easy parallel for his xenophobia/racism.
Still, there are signs (in his stories and personal letters) that he recognizes the fallacy of his xenophobia/racism later in his life. It's an interesting transition to watch. I'm not saying he became a liberal/progressive bastion, of course :)
