I had intended to comment on the "Fathers and Sons" thread, but couldn't.

The Holquist book is interesting and well written, but it's for a historian audience - not what I would think that the majority of readers around these parts would be interested in. Not slagging the book or anything (it does a great job of showing just how continuous the crisis in Russian really was), but the Turgenev might be more accessible to everyone.

Tom, I would think reading the non-Complete Edition would be just fine. Thanks for your willingness notwithstanding an already tall workload. ZJ

I've had Sketches from Hunter's Album on my shelf so long that it's gotten dog-eared from getting pushed around by other Russian books that I pick up often. It'd be the only one from this list I'd have time for these days (teaching keeps me swamped in "official" reading duties). I take it the Complete Edition is larger than the old Penguin edition I have (circa 1987?)

Perhaps its time some of us got together and nominated a few books for group reading. What suggestions do people have? Please feel free to post what you would be interested in reading and once we land a few common names perhaps we could tackle it.

I would throw out Peter Holquist's book Making War, Forging Revolution Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921 (2002) or perhaps Turgenev's classic Sketches from a Hunter's Album The Complete Edition.

And I did notice that R. Massie's Pulitzer winning Peter the Great was still in the to-read list, perhaps if people are interested we could also tackle it. I've read it, but would be happy to skim back over it and discuss it.