Sheba: The Seductive Russian Spy

Rating:
Summary: the novel of the year.
Review: If you think you understand sheba upon the first reading you might be confused as to the true genius of this magnum book. It is open to everyone, but you must put skill and time and work into reading it and fully understanding the new language that is being introduced and will soon take over the entire world of american literature in this, the 21st century. Sometimes a work comes along and people look at it was dark hollow eyes, unable to see what is on the horizon and what you might understand if you were a little kid or on some type of drug, but you're not alive when you're reading something that seems dead. Confusing? Yes it is...it is. It is the work of a mind beyond our own, a work that cannot be classified. Imagine a bird with a bell on his foot, landing on a house in the middle of the ocean. The bird opens his mouth and starts singing opera and RIGHT THEN a bullet races across the water and strikes that bird dead. What does it mean? Read sheba the russian spy and find out.

Rating:
Summary: Hilariously awful
Review: The best summary of this book that I can give is to relate how my friends and I use it as a social tool: if during an evening the conversation flags or people start looking at their watches a little too early, we break out "Sheba: The Seductive Russian Spy," open to a random page, and start reading. Within three lines people are laughing. Within two paragraphs people are holding their sides and wiping away the tears. After a page they start grabbing it out of my hands to see for themselves that I'm not making it up.
This is the most consistently horribly written book I've ever read. It is astonishing in its ability to ramble on for page after page with awkward and repetative sex scenes, nonexistant characterizations, incoherent plots, and a vocabulary of what seems to be less than 1,000 words. The fact that a book published in 2003 worries about Russian spies and that's not the worst thing about it ... the book never fails to deliver the horribleness.
That said, if you find a copy cheap, I'd go ahead and pick it up. I can honestly say I've never laughed at anything as much as I've laughed at this book.