I’ll go against the grain here and say that I was not a huge fan of this book.<p>I do understand that this is one of the first times the nuclear apocalypse was covered in sci-fi. My main gripe was the writing and how poorly strung together the story was.<p>Overall the book touched on a lot of great ideas, but the writing felt like it was the first time the author had written a book. A lot of a storylines were touched upon but never completed.<p>The thread that is drawn throughout the story just isn’t rewarding enough in my opinion. And don’t get me started on the terrible foray into the ethics of suicide that came out of nowhere.<p>I’m all for reading books that are challenging and fall outside of your traditional tastes but I struggled to make it all the way through this book. I celebrated when I was able to finally put it down.
The sequel, <i>Saint_Leibowitz_and_the_Wild_Horse_Woman</i> (434 pp. slightly unfinished for 40 years .. interesting, somewhat tragic story) was as enjoyable as the first to me.<p><a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/36581949" rel="nofollow">https://search.worldcat.org/title/36581949</a>
I tried to read this several times, but found it better as an audio drama. This free recording from NPR is really good quality:<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/NPRPresentsACANTICLEFORLIEBOWITZIn15Parts" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/NPRPresentsACANTICLEFORLIEBOWITZ...</a>
One aspect of Canticle I always admired was how the tempo of the book mirrors technical innovation. The book, which depicts a postapocalyptic society stuck in a kind of medieval dark age, starts out at a very slow pace (something I've seen readers complain about), and relatively little happens at first, but as this society starts discovering technology from the past, the pace picks up, and by the end of the book we've gone through hundreds of years of technological progress.<p>The book isn't perfect. The huge jump in time between each part of the book means that the plot essentially starts over in acts two and three, and you lose the continuity of character development. This was the result of Miller constructing the book from three separate short stories (heavily modified and greatly expanded), and is necessary in order to tell the story as it's designed, but it makes for a somewhat frustrating reading experience. Still, it's obviously a classic for many other reasons.
It's too bad Miller never wrote much after he published it. (I've not read the sequel.) Apparently he spent the rest of his life battling depression and writer's block, and committed suicide before he was able to publish anything else.
A classic. I read it again every couple of years or so.<p>The idea of trying to piece things back together after the apocalypse always resonated with me
one of my favorite books since high school. I remember mentioning it to my HS English teacher before class one day (20 years ago) and she amazed and surprised me by replying "oh that's one of my favorites!" It seemed like an esoteric book to me at the time, but her generation also knew of it. maybe the OP can share what they find interesting about it...
Read it here:<p><a href="https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Walter%20M.%20Miller%20Jr.%20-%20A%20Canticle%20for%20Leibowitz.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Walter%20M.%20Miller%20Jr.%...</a>