I myself do not really view “What is to be Done?” as a great beginner work for Marxists, since it mentions a lot of obscure philosophers or groups that a modern audience (with their cursory knowledge of Russian history being from the lips of liberals, or worse, conservatives) would hardly know the context of, and I am reading a version that has notes on these people!
That is not to say that it is not an influential or essential work of Lenin (I think it might be up there with “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” and “The State and Revolution” in terms of either factor), but one has to be willing to trudge through Russian names that you will likely never hear again.
“Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism” by Lenin
I find it important and, for me, it was a very good first read.
But it has sections that are filled with economic data for various countries at the time (Germany, France, Britain, Russia mostly) and it can become quite heavy and involved. I could see someone, who’s not used to reading that kind of book, being put off by the sheer volume of data drops that Lenin uses. When I recommend it, I usually tell people to skip the data analysis if they aren’t interested.
Yeah the economic data was hard to look at, but very useful otherwise (I consider it a necessity within Marxist theory).
I kinda wish there was a version of Capital without all the “p’ = s’ × [v / (c + v)]” stuff. When he talks about the process of Enclosure or the working conditions of the 19th century, or bagging on about how stupid capitalists are in their analysis I’m in to it but then the math hits and my brain goes blank.