The New! Improved! Bob and Ray Book

by Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding

Millions enjoyed these word wizards during their 40-year radio career. Here are 44 skits performed with wit by these two members of the National Broadcaster's Hall of Fame.

Genres: Humor, Literary Fiction

2 pages, Audio Cassette

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Bob Elliott (born 1923) and Ray Goulding (1922–1990) were an American comedy team whose career spanned five decades.

"Bob & Ray invented, dreamed up the lines for, and then played, mainly on radio and television, a surrealistic Dickensian repertory company, which chastens the fools of the world with hyperbole, slapstick, parody, verbal nonsense, non sequitur, and sheer wit, all of it clean, subtle and gentle... Bob & Ray's humor turns on their faultless timing and on their infinite sense of the ridiculous. It is also framed by that special sly, dry, wasteless vision of life perfected during the last couple of centuries by middle-class New Englanders..."

-- Whitney Balliett, writing in The New Yorker

"Bob & Ray can go on being funny almost indefinately."

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Reviews

[Rich Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

You really can't go wrong with an audiobook featuring Bob and Ray. They're two masters of the audio medium, having been on radio doing scripted an ad-libbed characters for forty years. This audiobook has some of their best bits, and captures the feel of their radio programs to a tee.

I'm not a big audiobook fan, but this is one of the best you'll ever hear!

[Steven Abercrombie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a book of skits. Most are really funny. You can imagine how the routines would be on the radio.

[Kristen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this print version of the book at a thrift store. I remember seeing Bob and Ray on the Tonight Show (Starring Johnny Carson) and on Letterman and thinking they were funny. The book was written in the mid 1980's and is basically a manuscript of a couple of their radio shows. It doesn't transfer very well to print. An audio version of the book would be the way to absorb this work. I really wanted to like the book, but it just wasn't funny.