Everything and a Kite - Hardcover

Romano, Ray

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553108743 ISBN 13: 9780553108743

Publisher: Bantam, 1998

Synopsis

In a books that is at once laugh-out-loud funny and all-too-true to life, comedy-talent-turned-television-star Ray Romano goes home again, revealing that the source of his inspiration is heritage, hearth and family. As did his stand-up comedy and his present, top-rated CBS-TV program, Romano draws on his real-life experience as a husband, a father, a father of twins, a son with parents living very very close, and a brother, to make readers laugh and laugh harder.

About this title

Review:

Ray Romano's Everybody Loves Raymond is the most important TV comedy since Seinfeld. Now he makes his debut as an author with a reported seven-figure book deal. Some of what makes his show great is captured between the covers of Everything and a Kite--it boasts the same affectionate, yet not cheaply sentimental, comedy that conveys actual insights about family life, an experience Martin Mull has likened to "having a bowling alley installed in your brain." The show is like Married... with Children with a heart or Home Improvement with a brain.

In book form, Romano is kind of like Dave Barry. Barry is funnier on the page, but Romano writes a good spritz-of-consciousness monologue. And Barry dared not utter the word prostate in Dave Barry Turns 50, but Romano provides a state-of-the-art prostate-exam reminiscence. There is no shame he shuns--not his fear of spiders, exacerbated when he splooshed one off his windshield with the washer button through the moonroof into the car while driving, nor his sexual-conquest count ("one less than the number of times I've been stung by a bee... greater than the number of times I've put a pet to sleep... exactly equal to the number of times I've been crapped on by a bird"). But Romano stole his title: when he asked his 4-year-old son what he wanted for his birthday, the kid said, "Everything and a kite." --Tim Appelo

About the Author:

Ray Romano is a comedian and Emmy Award -- winning star of the top-rated CBS television program Everybody Loves Raymond. This is Ray's first book for children, and he's written it with his two brothers, Richard, a retired New York police sergeant, and Robert, a New York City school teacher.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0553108743
• ISBN 13: 9780553108743
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224