A justice of Pennsylvania's Supreme Court once said of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer that it is "not a book. It is a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity." Personally, I think that makes it sound more interesting than it is. The book is a hybrid of autobiography and fiction that is nominally focused on the life of a struggling writer in France in the 1920s and 30s. Much more often, it's about that writer having, thinking about, and pursuing sex. I am not a fan.