Finished: Scoop (Waugh) Eh, probably my least favorite of the Waugh books I've read, and I had such hopes since it is one of his most highly regarded books! I think it was just not my cup of tea because it was chock full of political satire, and I'm just not good with political satire. Quiet, unassuming, bachelor William Boot, who lives in the country with his brothers and a bunch of older family members writes a small nature column for London's paper, The Beast. John Boot, a distant cousin who he's never met, is a relatively successful novelist with one very rich friend who happens to be the wife of a man with considerable influence in the government. When John Boot asks his friend, Mrs. Algernon Stitch, to help him figure out how to get out of a relationship he's entangled in, she suggests that he gets sent on a foreign writing assignment by The Beast, a paper owned by Lord Copper, her dear friend. The wealthy, but discombobulated Copper takes to the idea and calls up his newspaper editor, Mr. Salter, and demands that he send Boot to the politically unstable country of Ishmaelia in Africa. Salter looks for the only Boot he knows and can't believe that Lord Copper wants to send the mild-mannered nature columnist, William Boot, to an African country that is about to erupt in war...but send him he does. William Boot goes on quite an adventure and is taken advantage of by all the other reporters sent to the area, as he doesn't even know how to interpret or send a proper cable message to his newspaper. Just by being his innocent self, Boot manages to avoid being sent on a wild goose chase that all the other reporters follow, and he is the only reporter in the capital city when the coup takes place and the Russians take over Ishmaelia! He gets the story sent home and becomes an unlikely journalistic hero for The Beast, and all of London...since The Beast has the only reporter that gets the story. Meanwhile, John Boot goes to see his friend Mrs. Stitch and she can't believe that Lord Copper never sent her friend on the assignment. Once William gets home, he just wants to go back to his quiet life, but Lord Copper wants to have him knighted! In another mix up, it is actually John Boot who gets the invitation from HRM to be knighted instead of William, lol. And...lucky for him, he does finally get sent on The Beast's next foreign assignment to Antarctica. William happily resumes his former nature column and continues on with his unassuming life. This book just bordered on too much nonsense for me rather than just being a good, deep story. I'm so glad I read it, since I'd heard so much about it, but it really can't compare to two of my favorite books by Waugh, Brideshead Revisited and A Handful of Dust.