alkaios

they/them

367 points

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My Taste

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Reading...

The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides

alkaios commented on a post

20h

maribel

Thoughts from 27% (page 82)

I thought it‘s common knowledge that Frankenstein is not the monster but his creator but my boyfriend was just shocked when I told him. I guess it‘s like Zelda and Link for a lot of people haha. But I love how smooth this read is. I‘m all soaked in Frankenstein‘s world.

alkaios commented on a post

23h

alkaios

Edited

Best Book to Start Reading Austen?

I've never read any of Jane Austen's works (in fact I've read upsettingly few classic books by female authors) and I want to rectify that - I definitely feel like I'm missing out otherwise. I was just wondering: which work of hers is a good staring point? I've not read loads from that sort of genre so I'm finding them a bit daunting. So, just looking for some advice I guess.

Edit: Popular suggestions seem to be "Persuasion" or "Pride and Prejudice" so I'm going to keep a look out for one of those two. Thank you for all your responses :D

Post from the British & Irish Classic Literature forum

alkaios

Edited

Best Book to Start Reading Austen?

Edit: Popular suggestions seem to be "Persuasion" or "Pride and Prejudice" so I'm going to keep a look out for one of those two. Thank you for all your responses :D

alkaios wants to read...

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers. First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

alkaios wants to read...

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway

In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.

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A collection of the most influential works in American literature.

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A collection of the most influential works in American literature.

alkaios commented on a List

An Insight Into the First World War

by alkaios

10 books

A collection of memoirs and fiction written about WWI and its effects by people who lived and experienced it. Please suggest any other books you can think of - I'm always looking to add more perspectives and experiences to this curation. (The only caveat is that these are all English language books, so any suggestions should have an English translation.)

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alkaios finished reading and left a rating...

alkaios

Oct 03, 2025

3.5

Enjoyment: 3.5Quality: 4.0Characters: 3.0Plot: 3.5

🐕

👨‍🔬

alkaios commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Spud-dragon

What are your childhood nostalgia reads??

my husband and i just bought the full Chronicles of Narnia box set (second hand for $12!!) and i'm so excited to read them with him!

context: he is learning english and wanted a novel or novella to help him with reading comprehension. we chose these because while they are for children, they have great vocabulary with easy to follow stories

i'm stoked!

what are your nostalgia books??

Post from the A Dog's Heart forum

alkaios

Note from 64%

The translation I'm listening to translates his (🐕) name as Furballov and it just made me laugh a bit amongst this absolute fever dream of a story. Confused by the concept but enjoying the satire so far.

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Modern retellings of iconic, ancient tales

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Greek Myth Retellings

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alkaios started reading...

A Dog's Heart

Mikhail Bulgakov

“There is absolutely no necessity to learn how to read; meat smells a mile off, anyway. Nevertheless, if you live in Moscow and have a brain in your head, you’ll pick up reading willy-nilly, and without attending any courses. Out of the forty thousand or so Moscow dogs, only a total idiot won’t know how to read the word ‘sausage’.” When a stray dog dying on the streets of Moscow is taken in by a wealthy professor, he is subjected to medical experiments in which he receives various transplants of human organs. As he begins to transform into a rowdy, unkempt human by the name of Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, his actions distress the professor and those surrounding him, although he finds himself accepted into the ranks of the Soviet state. A parodic reworking of the Frankenstein myth and a vicious satire of the Communist revolution and the concept of the New Soviet man, A Dog’s Heart was banned by the censors in 1925 and circulated only in samizdat form. Nowadays this hugely entertaining tale has become very popular in Russia, and has inspired many adaptations across the world.

alkaios created a list

An Insight Into the First World War

alkaios wants to read...

Petrograd, 1917: Witnesses to the Russian Revolution

John Pinfold

The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution irrevocably changed the course of history, with consequences still being felt a century later. This book offers a dramatic depiction of the chaotic events of the revolution, drawn from selected firsthand accounts. Assembling extracts from letters, journals, diaries, and memoirs from a remarkably diverse cast of both Russians and foreign nationals who were there when the revolution broke, Petrograd, 1917 is a strikingly close-up account of these world-shaking events. Each entry is supplemented with a short introductory note that sets it in context, and the book is rounded out with more than seventy illustrations, including photographs of the Romanovs and the violence in the streets as well as propaganda posters, postcards to loved ones, and more. In these pages, the drama and terror of those days comes to life once more, a century on.

alkaios wants to read...

Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe

Adam Zamoyski

In 1920 the new Soviet state was a mess, following a brutal civil war, and the best way of ensuring its survival appeared to be to export the revolution to Germany, itself economically ruined by defeat in World War I and racked by internal political dissension. Between Russia and Germany lay Poland, a nation that had only just recovered its independence after more than a century of foreign oppression. But it was economically and militarily weak and its misguided offensive to liberate the Ukraine in the spring of 1920 laid it open to attack. Egged on by Trotsky, Lenin launched a massive westward advance under the flamboyant Marshal Tukhachevsky. All that Great Britain and France had fought for over four years now seemed at risk. By the middle of August the Russians were only a few kilometers from Warsaw, and Berlin was less than a week's march away. Then the Miracle of the Vistula occurred: the Polish army led by Jozef Pilsudski regrouped and achieved one of the most decisive victories in military history. As a result, the Versailles peace settlement survived, and Lenin was forced to settle for Communism in one country. The battle for Warsaw bought Europe nearly two decades of peace, and communism remained a mainly Russian phenomenon, subsuming many of the autocratic and Byzantine characteristics of Russia's tsarist tradition.

alkaios wants to read...

Testament of Youth

Vera Brittain

Much of what we know and feel about the First World War we owe to Vera Brittain's elegiac yet unsparing book, which set a standard for memoirists from Martha Gellhorn to Lillian Hellman. Abandoning her studies at Oxford in 1915 to enlist as a nurse in the armed services, Brittain served in London, in Malta, and on the Western Front. By war's end she had lost virtually everyone she loved. Testament of Youth is both a record of what she lived through and an elegy for a vanished generation. Hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as a book that helped “both form and define the mood of its time,” it speaks to any generation that has been irrevocably changed by war.

alkaios commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

alkaios

Edited

WW1 Book Recommendations

I was wondering if any one had any recommendations of books about world war one by authors who were alive at the time, regardless of if they were military or civilian. So like memoirs, or historical fiction drawn from there own experiences. I'd be especially interested if the books are in English translation - as I was only ever taught about the British (and a bit of American) perspectives at school, but I don't know any other languages yet. Also, I feel like I only know much about the western front, not the eastern or alpine fronts for example - so that would be very interesting. Or any books written by women, I feel I know very little from their perspective of this time.

I've read All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Road Back by Remarque, and Storm of Steel by Jünger is on my tbr, but I'd really like to know more.

I'd also be interested in any more modern WW1 historical fictions recs.

I'd be really grateful for any suggestions! Hopefully this isn't too niche 🤞🤞

Edit was just adding clarification, sorry

Second Edit: I'm thinking of trying to make a list of these sorts of books if I can curate enough? Does that sound interesting?

alkaios wants to read...

The Court of the Dead

Rick Riordan

New York Times #1 bestselling authors Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro collaborate again on a new adventure in which demigod Nico di Angelo teams up with his half-sister Hazel Levesque to protect . . . monsters? A few months after returning from the depths of Tartarus, demigods Nico di Angelo and Will Solace agree to join Nico's half-sister Hazel Levesque at Camp Jupiter on the West Coast. She needs their help in managing a situation that the boys inadvertently brought about: the demigods showed the monsters of the Underworld that they have options; they don’t have to be evil. Now some of those monsters have taken up residence at Camp Jupiter to seek refuge. Nico and Will are on site, assisting Hazel when one by one monsters start disappearing from camp. A mysterious dark force is at work, and its plan is to punish all monsters for their past crimes. Things only get worse when Nico, Will, and Hazel learn that they’re all connected to it . . .

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