I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny

✍ Scribed by Newhart, Bob

• Book ID: 109733979
• Publisher: Hyperion
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 116 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781401302467
• ASIN: B001Q9E9KG

✦ Synopsis

A guy is having an affair with his boss’s wife. They are making mad passionate love, and she says, "Kiss me! Kiss me!" He looks at her very seriously and replies, "I shouldn’t even be doing this!"

This isn’t a memoir like most memoirs. It’s a book only Bob Newhart could have written, with his unique worldview and irrepressibly wry humor on every page. Oh, and there’s a fair bit of plain silliness too. In this, his first book ever, Newhart gives his brilliant and bemused twist on a multitude of topics, including flying, the trials of a family holiday in a Winnebago, and more serious subjects, such as gold. And of course, there are side-splittingly funny stories from his life and career. Who else has a drinking game named after him? ("Hi Bob!")

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Beginning with his 1960 Grammy-winning album, The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart , the comedian's 46-year career has included nightclub standup, TV series (The Bob Newhart Show), animation voices (The Simpsons), feature films (Catch-22 , Elf)—and now his first book. At age 77, Newhart is clearly in his anecdotage, with mirthful memories of his successes and failures. Treating the reader almost as a personal friend, Newhart covers everything in this guided tour through his button-down brain, from his 43-year marriage and fear of flying to fatherhood, Vegas, sitcoms, golf and assorted antics with celebrity pals. Aware that digression is the better part of valor, he interrupts the low-key autobiographical flow with amusing asides, and this rambling look at "the absurdist side of life" is just as effective in print as on TV, adding depth and dimension to the familiar image of Newhart as a frustrated, flawed everyman. In the tradition of Max Eastman's Enjoyment of Laughter (1936) and Steve Allen's The Funny Men (1956), he analyzes and compares comedy styles. The hilarity is heightened as he reveals how he created his best satirical sketches. Influenced by H. Allen Smith, Robert Benchley, James Thurber and Max Shulman, Newhart himself has now joined that lofty pantheon. (Sept. 19)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Bob Newhart is a great comedian and a great American." -- David Hyde Pierce