The Obscure Reading Group discussion

After many great nominations, three favorites, and a good competition, an obscure novel by Ivan Turgenev has come out on top and we will be reading
Home of the Gentry, aka
A Nest of the Gentry, aka
A House of Gentlefolk

There may be even more aka's, but we can discuss titles and translations here. Soon we’ll get to a reading schedule, but plan to begin our discussions of this gem on June first.

Thank you all for your participation and patience getting here. It is our second Russian author in a row, but I think this one will be very different.

Just pulled my copy of this book (an old Penguin classic translated by Richard Freeborn) and see that it's only 186 pp.

This means the reading schedule will be easy because there's no need to divide it up, it's so short. We'll just launch into a full-book discussion on June 1st.

This was only Turgenev's second novel. The back blurb says it is not only about the protagonist's homecoming, but "the homecoming of a whole generation of Russian gentry who have flirted with Western ideas and found only failure and disillusion, and return 'to plow the land' in the hope of a distant harvest."

It kind of reminds me of Gorbachev and Perestroika -- for one brief, shining moment, the union of Russia and the West in harmony, yet somehow fumbled away, leaving the door open for something worse than disillusionment.

Great. I like Turgenev. His Fathers and Sons was a great philosophical read, but his First Love was a little too simple for me; they were almost like different writers. Looking forward to seeing where this one sits in the spectrum. I better order myself a copy.

Ok, I did start it. At first I thought it was a different book. Then I found the main character reference.

Different editions seem to have quite different number of pages. Interesting. The edition I have requested from the library says 311, hopefully much of it an introduction.

I sampled the first chapter of three different translations and have decided to read The Penguin Classics version. They are generally trustworthy in the translation and I thought it had the smoothest flow of the three.

That's the one I downloaded Sara. Penguin usually does a good job.

I’m wondering. Did you download the Penguin version for kindle, Diane? I bet it would be better than the 90 year old library copy though I hadn’t planned on buying one. Hey, I haven’t read a Russian novel for a while.

If it's an old translation, it's no doubt the work of that warhorse translator of all things Russian, Constance Garnett.

I purchased the Penguin edition translated by Freeborn...mostly because I like those Penguin black book covers. It is arriving Wednesday, I think.

Ken- that’s really cool you have books like this on your shelves! I just ordered from Alibris. Amazon ones sounded fake. I like penguin books.

Wow on the translator. Lol

The Garnett translation is available on Kindle for just $2.99.

I believe the Garnett translation is also on Project Gutenberg, if anyone wants to read it that way.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5721/...

And I don't do Kindle so I'm not sure if this works, but Gutenberg says they have a free Kindle download here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5721

I'm looking at a library copy called A House of Gentlefolk--Harvard Classics--that I think is also Garnett.

I'm perplexed that Sue's copy is over 300 pp. and mine is around 200 pp. That's one hell of an introduction!

In any event, I'll be relaxing with my own reads. Probably I'll pick this up the last three or four days of May. It'll be fresh in what remains of my brain for June 1st!

I'll be doing the same, Ken. A last minute blast, especially if it's so short.

Yes Sue, I got the Penguin version for Kindle. I didn't participate in our last read, so it'll be my first Russian novel in a while too. I'll probably follow Ken's lead and read it the last week of May.

Ken, I’ll probably get the book soon, unless it’s missing in the bowels of the school library where it’s located. The length may be due to the font or some other idiosyncrasy from 1930. If it’s too crazy, I’ll opt for the Penguin edition.

Hi everybody! I'm very excited about reading with you :) I joined the group at the beginning of the year, but I was reading 'Middlemarch' with another book club in February so couldn't do the Karamazov Brothers.

Ken wrote: "This means the reading schedule will be easy because there's no need to divide it up, it's so short. We'll just launch into a full-book discussion on June 1st"
Sorry, does this mean we have to have the book already read by 1 June?

Plateresca wrote: "Hi everybody! I'm very excited about reading with you :) I joined the group at the beginning of the year, but I was reading 'Middlemarch' with another book club in February so couldn't do the Karam..."

Yes, that is the hope!

I too have downloaded Penguin classics, translated by Richard Freeborn.

I picked up my 92 year old copy of the book, held by a local private school library, translated by Constance Garnett. It appears that there are so many pages because the pages themselves are small and the area with print is much smaller than in a modern book… one and one-half inch margins on three sides with about half an inch on the inside margin.

I’ll see if I can tolerate the print size.

And there is a note written in the margin on the first page of chapter two. It appears to be in Russian so I have no idea what it says! I should ask a friend of mine who went to this high school years ago and studied Russian in college.

Oooh, I would love just holding the book and looking at it, Sue. Then I would promptly switch to a download to do my reading. lol. I always love to touch books that are older than I am and think about all the hands that have held them and how each person was changed just a little by what they found inside.

I know exactly what you mean, Sara. I’d love to know who wrote in the book but it was probably a cheeky student. It’s apparently from a series of Turgenev novels from MacMillan. In the list of books, Fathers and Sons is Fathers and Children. This novel is The House of Gentlefolk.

I have a strong feeling that I will desert this book before long in favor of something easier to read. While I would like to read a paper copy this is not the one I want and electronic allows for so many size options.

I use both print and ebooks, but have to admit loving the real book more. Print size is a deal breaker though, so I'm with Sara. Those old books are such treasures. Our annual big library sale is in 2 weeks and I'm salivating at the thought of what I might find.

Huge margins were a thing with many old books. Maybe for annotations -- the "thread discussions" of olden times when readers and writers conversed that way.

Glad everyone is finding an edition to their liking AND that copies are relatively inexpensive!

I went to collect my copy from my local library today and it wasn't on the Reservation shelf. Checked with a member of staff, and nope, nowhere in sight. She said it's getting quite common that people look at the Reservation shelf and if there's anything they like, they take it, ignoring the label that has the surname of the person who reserved it. If that's the case then our book choice was so good it was stolen from me.

Matthew Ted wrote: "I went to collect my copy from my local library today and it wasn't on the Reservation shelf. Checked with a member of staff, and nope, nowhere in sight. She said it's getting quite common that peo..."

Wouldn't this be an easy sleuth job for the librarian, who could simply go to her computer to see who checked it out? Unless you mean STOLE as in walked out of the library with it. But if that's the case, it could be done from any old shelf.

Suggestion Box for your library: Move the Reservations Shelf to a location where only librarians can access it.

Ken wrote: "Matthew Ted wrote: "I went to collect my copy from my local library today and it wasn't on the Reservation shelf. Checked with a member of staff, and nope, nowhere in sight. She said it's getting q..."

I wondered that too, she just reordered it. She never got to the bottom of where it went, exactly. Here's hoping the next one makes it to me. As I left the library I heard her talking to another member of staff saying exactly this, "Maybe we should move the reservations as this keeps happening."

People are such weasels sometimes.

Guess it isn’t so obscure if others are stealing it.

Perhaps it's another ORG reader who happens to live in the UK? Grist for another British mystery show?

I'm glad they were able to reorder it, Matthew Ted.

This is weird. I'm having a problem with my hold book too. It was showing as "in transit" in my account, and then today it just fell off. Disappeared. I'm waiting to see what the library says ...

Maybe that mystery show is a good idea!

It is a conspiracy to keep us from reading Turgenev.

Good thing mine showed up as it was the only one in our system. Odd that they never got another copy in almost 100 years but I guess that speaks to how obscure it is!

Our library has a special room just for reservations and they are shelved so that the titles are hidden unless you take every book off the shelf to "browse". It's also in direct eyeline of the info desk.

Diane wrote: "Our library has a special room just for reservations and they are shelved so that the titles are hidden unless you take every book off the shelf to "browse". It's also in direct eyeline of the info..."


My library as well. 95% of the books I check out come via the inter-library loan system, and those are kept behind the circulation desk so that, upon arrival, you just say, "I have 5 books on hold" or something (you get notification of their arrival via email).

I'd be in trouble without inter-library loans, especially when it comes to poetry books (the shelf of which is called "Death Valley Days" in my hometown library).

That said, my hometown library is a great place to find bestsellers (don't read), mysteries (don't read), romance (don't read), and cookbooks (use the internet instead).

I do appreciate my librarians, though. The head librarian was even kind enough to stock my third poetry book, thus emphasizing the "Death" in "Valley Days" in that scorched-earth section of Dewey's Decimal. No one has checked it out, which is sad, but I take some consolation in the fact that no one has checked any poetry out. (My librarians just shake their heads sympathetically.)

Ken wrote: "Diane wrote: "Our library has a special room just for reservations and they are shelved so that the titles are hidden unless you take every book off the shelf to "browse". It's also in direct eyeli..."

Wow. To have one of your books in a library. To walk by and see it there. That's very cool in itself, Ken!

What? You actually think I'd walk down the 800 aisle to visit my own book sitting lonely as a shepherd's field with its green spine on the shelf between Collins comma Billy and Dryden comma John, so thin you'll miss it if you aren't careful? This would never happen.

Greetings folks, I too am new and excited about joining the discussion on this book. I hope to be on my second read through by the time the conversation starts in June, as those lovely long Russian names tend to get me a little confused (thus a 2nd reading is often helpful with Russian titles). I'm enjoying it so far...

Glad to hear you're enjoying it, Sara! They did straighten out my little library snafu, so I should have my copy soon.

And to what Ken was saying about libraries, mine is also big on best sellers and cookbooks, but I discovered something surprising recently. My library hold shelf is out in the open, sorted alpha by patrons name, and I went in to pick a hold up and it wasn't there (it wasn't stolen, just misplaced). In the course of looking for it, I went through all the hold books. Surprise! All really good stuff there! Even poetry. :-) It made me feel so good to know there were other people reading outside the "norm."

Sara wrote: "Greetings folks, I too am new and excited about joining the discussion on this book. I hope to be on my second read through by the time the conversation starts in June, as those lovely long Russian..."

I am most impressed that you are reading this twice, Sara. In a word: Wow!

Oh, please, don't be impressed. It's just what my brain needs to do in order to hold a decent conversation about anything this interesting! I've seen some of your past discussions--I want to keep up ~ :-)

Has anyone started to read this. I don’t know about the translation I have. Having a hard time following it. I am about 45% done. More later about this.

I haven't started yet, but I finally got my library copy--a lovely 1917 Harvard Classics edition, translated by Constance Garnett of course.

I know she has a bad rep, and understandably so based on scholarship according to many sources, including this New Yorker article:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

I'm in no way a scholar, so it's probably a case of not knowing what I'm missing, but I've enjoyed all of her translations that I've read. And I think it says somewhere in the article that Turgenev was her favorite.

Too soon for me to start. I'm reading one of the finalists now, Night's Lies.

I actually got a copy of that one through Abe Books, Ken. So I will read it eventually.

Ken wrote: "Too soon for me to start. I'm reading one of the finalists now, Night's Lies."

I got the copy this week, How do you like it?

Carol wrote: "Ken wrote: "Too soon for me to start. I'm reading one of the finalists now, Night's Lies."

I got the copy this week, How do you like it?"


I've been doing a lot of silly, physical labor this week -- picking up sticks in the woodsy back lot, for one -- so I'm only some 37 pages in, but so far, so good. It reminds me of Sartre's short story, "The Wall," being a night before execution story.

If you don't go in for philosophy or religion, there's nothing like a night-before-your-execution as a primer. As Horace Greeley didn't say: "Go deep, young man!"

Copy received, five chapters read. I have the old black Penguin edition, love those black spines, in remarkably good condition from 1985. Translator is Richard Freeborn.