Canticle for Leibowitz | 
panI know this is a classic and been wanting to read it for years. I think it‘s an important read for it‘s philosophical teachings and learnings, but it bored the tears out of me. I just wasn‘t the audience for it. I would never talk anyone out of reading it.
bailedCould I BE anymore bored? 🥸
Read halfway through, I hate doing it but I have to bail! ❌️
pickWalter Miller's book is really a collection of 3 novellas that tells the story of humanity's survival following a nuclear war. Spanning hundreds of years & focusing on the events at a monastery, we witness the preservation of human knowledge & subsequent rebuilding of civilization as Miller grapples with the darker, & destructive, fundamental aspects of human nature. Published 9 years after Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, another fix-up novel,
To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.
pickScience fiction, for the most part, does not age well. Instead, with time it becomes a series of observations on what the author didn‘t foresee, or on predictions that did not come to pass. Canticle for Leibowitz, in contrast, is readable 50 years after it was written. It remains an entertaining (though somewhat overlong) story of science, religion and the political overlay that inevitably ignores them both, leading to war and destruction.
pick4/5 ⭐️s // the only reason why I give this four stars instead of five is because I wasn‘t a fan of the writing style. however, the story itself is absolutely incredible. so much to unpack that my brain is still trying to sort out!
I am posting one book per day from my extensive to-be-read collection. No description or reason for wanting to read the book. Some are old and some will be new. Don't judge me - I have a lot of books.
Day 283
#tbrmountain #bookbuyingdiet
bailedI don‘t have a pic b/c I read this as a library book a while ago. I thought due to my love of dystopian fiction and my interest in religion (especially Catholicism, though I‘m not Catholic), that I would love this book. Quite the opposite! It was painful slogging through this. There are only two books I couldn‘t finish, and this is one of them. Deeply disappointing!
#ManicMonday #LetterC @joscho
📖 A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller Jr.)
💻 Anton Chekhov
🎬 Castle Rock (produced by JJ Abrams & Stephen King)
🎤 The Carpenters
🎼 Controversy (Prince)
pickFast-paced novel with a great plot. He saw the future, at least part of it.
Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of twentieth-century literature—a chilling and still provocative look at a post-apocalyptic future.(Goodreads)
pickJust finished it yesterday, right in time to start my #bookspin title. A captivating post-apocalyptic read, I loved the monks' work to try to save past writings and everything else.
Unfortunately, unlike other reviewers, instead of hope for the future, I mostly see the tragedy of the human race messing it up; I guess I am more pessimistic than most. Despite all this, overall it is a good read, for any fiction reader, science fiction fan or not.
Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, as long as they don‘t seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste.
This sci-fi classic is still on my TBR, at the heart of it is an argument about the innate destructiveness of #humannature I'm not saying I completely agree with Miller, I'm not saying I don't either...
#MOvember @Cinfhen
pickAccording to Goodreads, I‘ve read this before and I had given it a three. Past Erica is a jerk because I don‘t remember this book at all and it was excellent. Book two done for Tome Infinity and Beyond Round 3. Now to continue on the wonderful book The Death of Grass. This readathon has basically just been an excuse to do rereads.
Book 2 for the Tome Infinity and Beyond Readathon! I‘m counting this book as my America book. This is also for my sci-fi book club so I have my sticky notes ready. I‘m prepared to tab this bad boy up!!
pickA 1959 book that was unknown to me, discovered for my year of SFF. It reminded me a little of Foundation and also Fahrenheit 451, with the concept of civilisation destroying itself, rebuilding, only to destroy itself again. The book is told in three linked novellas - each one the forgotten prehistory of the next. For such a serious theme there is also humour and fascinating characters 4.5 stars (pic: piece of a recent New Yorker review)
My local library had its first sci-fi/fantasy book club meeting tonight and I think it was an awesome turnout. We had seven people and the tagged book is gonna be our first read. As an extra perk, I own a lot of the books we‘re considering and this is a great opportunity for me to read them. I‘m not awesome at making friends outside of the Internet so I‘m really pumped for this book club!
Loved The Westing Game so much, I thought I'd take another @Liberty classic recommendation. #allthebooks
"Miserable old pretzel!"
I need to start using this.
pickLeibowitz is primarily a cautionary tale about nuclear war and history repeating itself. However, the main theme to me is the unreliability of history and religion. I finished reading and thought about how much out world has been shaped by misconceptions, misconstrued beliefs, ignorance, lies, and misplaced power. Some of the science fiction seems outdated, but the themes are just as important now as they‘ve ever been.
Tried this in print years ago, and could not get into it. Giving it a second go on audiobook.
pickI was worried when I heard this was chosen for my book club but I really enjoyed it. Preferred the first two stories, but the third was good too. Looking forward to reading the sequel at some point. 4/5 #specfic #septemberreads #shortstories
Canticle For Leibovitz
John Connolly
Colony (Just finished Season 3 and am sad it was cancelled)
Chinese
This is the first one I‘ve done. Not sure if I should go back and do A & B
#manicmonday @JoScho
so-soWell, I judged this one too soon. I was really excited about it at first. Brother Francis did the things and it was fun and I really liked Brother Francis.
And then other things happened and I got bored and I wanted Brother Francis back. It didn‘t go where I thought it was going to go.
It is a cold, disgusting, gray day here in Maine, so I‘m staying in bed with an old friend. *wink wink* *nudge nudge* Know what I mean? (Yep, I mean I‘m reading one of my favorite books.)🖤
Holiday reading, I am taking xmas week off. I may actually read them all, because my computer is fucked :(
I‘m part of two Postal Book Clubs and this is the first in my Smooch Island Book Club! So excited to get started.
pickThis book was so good! Good enough that I want to go out and buy a copy for my permanent library, plus read the sequel. A meditation on the aftermath of manmade destruction, and whether humans are doomed to repeat mistakes. The eternal conflict between spiritual and secular values runs all through the book. It's thought-provoking and well-written. No wonder it won the Hugo Award.
It has been a while since I read this book, but I remember it well as a classic sci-fi/ dystopian fiction and at this price on Audible it is well worth the purchase.
so-soIt might be that I listened to this on audiobook and hated the narrator or that I've been having a very stressful week and not focusing, but I retained so little of this book it's not even funny. I did like the overall concept, but it was a bit dense and heavy-handed for my taste.
I tried to think of clever plays on #lent for #marchmadness but I decided to play it straight. This darkly comical classic examines the complex relationship between faith and science into the far distant future.
Reading this one for a book club I'm in! I'm running out of time to finish reading it myself, so I'm switching to audio. I hope the narrator is good!
pickWow. Very thought - provoking. I keep thinking about it even though I finished it the other day.
Starting this puppy for a book club! I have literally no idea what to expect. I haven't even read the back cover.
I #ThrewItAcrossTheRoom. Twice. In righteous frustration. But when I finished it I was incapable of feeling anything other than bleak despair for days. #NoHopeForHumanity (Is that a hashtag? It should be.) Excellent, excellent book. But such a depressing vision. (And indeed the author later committed suicide.) #photoadaynov16
September was a good month. Managed to finish Moby Dick - yay! - and really liked most of my reads. I did not finish The Interestings - it was boring, ironically. I also did not like The Call of Cthulhu, confirming that horror is not for me. The others were all good. I am happy with the page count, too, and the progress I made on my reading challenges as well - nine books toward two challenges!
#stats #somethingforsept #bestreadsofseptember
pickThis is the gentlest, loveliest book that will ever make you ponder nuclear holocaust. Alternately humorous, cerebral, endearing and philosophical, we follow our honest, God-fearing monks in their faithful mission of keeping the "Memorabilia" - fragments of scientific knowledge that survived the "Flame Deluge". Can we learn from history, or will we inevitably destroy ourselves? And, who will be Pope after the Earth is destroyed? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
My next read. I have been looking forward to this sci-fi classic for a while.
pickAnyone who believes that science fiction can't be literary or cerebral needs to be sat down with this book. This story follows a Christian abbey and its monks across centuries of the future of post-apocalyptic humanity, turning over many questions about human nature and ethics along the way. A classic of thoughtful science fiction, alongside the likes of Hyperion and the Years of Rice and Salt.
pickThis is a great post-apocalyptic book that examines the possible reaction by the Roman Catholic Church. His use of language and imagery draws the reader into this world
