Parade magazine is marking its 75th anniversary. It was started in 1941 by what has now become the Chicago Sun-Times as a weekly insert for Sunday newspapers. They asked novelist Ann Patchett to make a list of the best 75 books published over the magazine’s lifespan. Patchett is probably best known for her award winning novel Bel Canto. She enlisted workers in her Nashville bookstore to help her make selections. Brideshead Revisited, published in 1945, is at the top of her own contributions to the list:
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)
“This book is so perfectly executed—literature at its most engaging. When I think about so many of the books on this list, I’m also thinking about the books that didn’t get on. Personally, I love A Handful of Dust slightly more than Brideshead, but I was outvoted.”
She might also have noted that A Handful of Dust would have been ineligible for selection because it was published in 1934. Other books on the list that are written in the satiric tradition include Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Edward St Aubyn’s Complete Patrick Melrose Novels, and Jane Gardam’s Old Filth.
