Complete Book of Roasts, Boasts, & Toasts

By Elmer Pasta

Book Overview

Jokes about relatives, physical traits, hobbies, personality types, and professions ranging from mayor to ditchdigger are collected for use by public speakers. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0131583298
• ISBN13: 9780131583290
• Release Date: July 1982
• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Length: 375 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Great concept, good number of entries...too punny

This is a GREAT CONCEPT for a book: a highly well organized series of short "roasts, boasts and toasts" neatly listed under literally hundreds of professions, hobbies and personality types. I've used this book for years when I customize a show. I am a ventriloquist so one of the toast lines in this book for me would be: Here's a toast to a typical ventriloquist -- someone whose lips move even when he isn't saying anything. BUT there's also lines like: She's such a simple-minded ventriloquist it's hard to figure out which one is the dummy.Herein lies the problem: this is a decent sized book with lots of entries. Unfortunately, many of them are too punny or "groaners." (The comment about which one is the dummy would provoke a "titter" -- polite chuckle). There are some good lines, to be sure, but if you check off really good, solid laughs, the pickings are not as good as you'd like (or expect). Again, I USE this book when I customize a show so I know some of it WORKS for speakers, entertainers, etc. -- and this is a valuable book to have your bookshelf. But some of these could fall embarrassingly flat due to the large proportion of puns.SO: At first I almost gave it 3 stars...but in the end I gave it four because it IS so well-organized and easy to use, and there ARE some real gems... but not as many as you'd like for a book nearly 400 pages long.