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Evelyn Waugh Wrote 1999's Best Book

© Robert Powers

This is the time of year when book reviewers everywhere make lists of their favorites. Reviewers are fortunate in being able to pick out the books they'd like to read from the tri-annual catalogs issued by publishers.

Using a formula known only to themselves, the publishers will send out review copies a few weeks prior to the release dates of their new books. I've never kept track of the percentage of books I receive against the large numbers that I request. But it's always many more than I possibly can read. As a result, sometimes books I enjoy don't get reviewed on time.

My favorite book of 1999, after much due consideration, is the marvelous The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh (Little, Brown, $29.95). These stories, almost entirely capable of producing guffaws, titters, chuckles, and roaring ha-has, were originally published from 1926 to 1963, three years prior to the satirist's death at age 63.

Born to a relatively wealthy family of writers and publishers, Waugh was educated at Lancing and at Hertford College, Oxford. Throughout his life he was in the midst of people who possessed lots of money, but little common sense. The writer is at his best in poking fun at his contemporaries, and in so doing exposing their cockeyed ways of looking at the world.

If you're looking for laughter in large servings, this book should fill this bill. It would make a fabulous gift for a favorite aunt or uncle.

At the same time, Little, Brown brought out The Complete Stories, they also issues snappy new paperback editions, priced at $13.95 each, of six of Waugh's novels. The new editions include Scoop, Vile Bodies, The Loved One, Decline and Fall, and Brideshead Revisited. These all are worthwhile. My particular favorites are Decline and Fall and The Loved One, a cutting and bizarre satire of Hollywood and the funeral industry.

TUNEFUL TRIO

If you are of a certain age and grew up during World War II, you will be able to quickly answer this question. Who was the most successful and enduring female vocal group in the history of show business?

Give up? You must be too young to remember. The answer is Patti, Maxene and LaVerne, the trio of songtresses who captivated America. Yep, they are the Andrews Sisters.

Writer John Sforza has done a good job in telling the story of this dynamic trio in his new book, Swing It! The Andrews Sisters Story (University Press of Kentucky, $25).

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