(Once in a while, you've just got to stop reading a book before the last page. Abandoned explores the reasons behind flagrant book-dropping.)

What's the abandoned book?
Erotomania, by Francis Levy.

Why'd you pick it up?
Well, first of all, the cover features monkeys fucking. Plus, I tend to read erotic fiction, because it's very hard to do well.

What's it about?
"Although ostensibly about the search for a real-life woman who can live up to the narrator's vision of sexual bliss, the novel is really about the way we long for intimate connection in and beyond bed. Written in the form of spiritual quest for a carnal idee fixe, this novel wears its avid penis on its sleeve and is all the more surprisingly affecting because of it."

How far did you get into it?
Only about forty pages.

Was there one sentence that put you off?
Nope.

Why can't you finish it?
I never thought I'd say this, but there's too much sex. Consider this sentence: "I'd be flown out to Duluth or Boise for a day's work on shows that were already running and return home in time to find my dick as deeply embedded in the soft wet folds of her pussy as the engravings are on the sarcophagus of an Egyptian empress." It's like Henry Miller on speed and without an editor.

Should everybody avoid this one?
Nope. I think Henry Miller fans might like it a lot. It's certainly not for fans of erotica, but for people who still experience a flush of titillation every time they hear the words "fuck," "dick," or "pussy," this might be their kind of thing.