Has anyone read De Sade's 120 Days of Sodom?

De Sade wrote the 120 Days while locked up in the Bastille with not much to do. In that sense you could consider the book to be one long fantasy he concocted to pass the time, a way to relieve the boredom by writing down the utmost he could come up with in the way of sexual depravity and excess.

It's not a readable book and the last parts are nothing more than outlines for plots or scenes. You might suppose that de Sade got tired of writing that as well after a while. After all, repetition gets boring too, even when trying to be shocking.

So, to answer your question: no, it's not really worth it. Perhaps the introduction/set up is more interesting than the rest of the work. But once you've read that, the rest is more of the same.

And it is a book that is more interesting to read about, rather than to actually read itself.

I've tried to. So much shit eating, piss drinking and child abuse. It becomes mind numbing after a while. I bought a second hand copy of it from a book store just because it's a good collector's item.