A Canticle for Leibowitz

I have to say up front that this is at or near the top of my all-time Best Books Ever Read list - and seeing as I am a quick reader, and have been reading largely SF for over 40 years, there are a LOT I could choose from.

I read "Canticle" sometime back in the late 1970s, and it had an immediate and profound impact on me - not least because I had in fact been schooled by monks (and friars), and could identify with much of the desert abbey material. I was also in awe of how well Miller managed to take the reader along through future history with him, and how complete was his imagining of what it might look like.

I have re-read it a number of times in the decades since, and it still holds its appeal - unlike, for example, much of Asimov and Heinlein.  I sincerely and whole-heartedly recommend this book: it is a gentle, intelligent, funny and sad post- and pre-apocalyptic novel that will grab hold early, and not let go.