Guardian Newspaper 1000 Novels discussion

In January we will be reading A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. for our Sci-Fi & Fantasy category - who's in?

Story of my life- I started this for another group last year, but got bogged down and didn't finish it.

So.. sign me up.

I can't confirm this, but I think Mr. Miller took a page from Death Comes for the Archbishop- like Stars My Destination was The Man in the Iron Mask.

I read this a few years ago so I don't know if I will reread it. Maybe.

I have 5 people ahead of me on my Open Library waiting list, so it might be a while.

I will deffo be reading this one
intending to start on or after 15th Jan...

I whizzed through this in 24 hours and loved it. It’s completely timeless and can be read on many levels. If you just want a straight up apocalypse story it can do that for you or you can use it for a springboard to open your mind to many philosophical questions about humankind and their apparent innate need to destroy itself. I think sci-Fi is a great genre for providing good stories, solid writing and asking sociological, economical, theological and ethical questions (all within this book)

Fay wrote: "I think sci-Fi is a great genre for providing good stories, solid writing and asking sociological, economical, theological and ethical questions (all within this book).."

Me too - that is one reason that I like it so much!

started reading this last night, and going well so far!

just finished part 1, and although I enjoyed the writing, it seemed like a half-decent idea for a short story had been blown up to 130 pages
hope the other 2 parts don't follow similar pattern...

My review: I agree with Darren - this would have been a good short story (book 1, essentially) but got less and less involving as the book went on.

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This started off well and gradually got less and less involving for me. Post-apocalyptic worlds where civilisation needs to rebuild from the dark ages upwards, with religions based upon confused misinterpretations of everyday texts, are now fairly common (Will Self's Book of Dave, for example). And this does it well, up to a point. After that point it starts to get tedious.

Book 1, with the inept and unlucky Brother Francis, was my favourite section. It's fresh, it's unpretentious, it doesn't use far too much latin .... and Francis is a likeable character. Book 2 and 3 get gradually less interesting, because the same point is made over and over again (society is making the same mistakes ...) and the last book was just a bit annoying, because not very much happens (other than the end of the world .... again). Overall, I felt that this was a short story that got out of hand.