Conan the Barbarian. Practically a modern-day icon, alongside the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, and Mickey Mouse, it's hard not to at least have heard the name. However, despite being a fan of fantasy fiction, I hadn't taken the time to really read any of the classic stories from the franchise, so I only knew what could be gathered through cultural osmosis: he's a barbarian, he doesn't wear a lot of clothes, and he's a good fighter.
Nevertheless, in my trips to various used book sales, I had picked up a handful of the Tor novels from the 80s. I figured they would be worth a read, but as I started looking things up on Wikipedia, I learned that there's a lot more to this character and world than I anticipated. I decided I didn't want to dive in the middle, but maybe look into reading some of older stuff in an effort to understand the timeline and where the books I had bought fit in. Of course, that's when I ran into the staggering list of books that fall into the franchise (to say nothing of the different chronologies some folks have put together in an attempt to have it all make sense). After some consideration, I've decided to focus on the classic Lancer/Ace series (those with the famous Frank Frazetta covers) as my main core, and then reading through the handful of books I have when they show up in the timeline, mainly looking at the William Galen Gray chronology from the above link as my guide.
For what it's worth, I am not planning on reading and reviewing all the Conan books, as there are dozens of them, and that would be just too dang much for me, especially as a series of review articles. At the moment, my plan consists of the 12 Lancer/Ace books, the 6 Robert Jordan books, and a few others that I've acquired or otherwise caught my interest (such as that new one by S.M. Sterling that came out at the end of last year!). I figure that should let me cover the classic stories while giving me a pretty good basis of the world and timeline, should I decide to read more.