Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller

The best novel ever written? Yes. Miller is an artist and a writer and a dreamer and a realist all at the same time. Fucking. Drinking. Laughing. Walking. Writing. Smoking. Paris. Do I even need to go on?

Miller makes the Beats look tired and weather-worn. He makes Bukowski look like a dirty old man with a pen. He makes any preoccupation with religion seem heretical. Miller's writing is all about the reasons we choose to live instead of ending it all off a bridge one night. Tropic of Cancer is the Bible of our times. It's the American Manifesto. It saved my life and it can save yours too.