Laura Bush signs memoir deal

According to The Wall Street Journal, outgoing U.S. First Lady Laura Bush has just signed a deal with Scribner for a memoir of her time in the White House, which should hit the streets sometime in 2010.

Publishing executives estimated the price for Mrs. Bush’s memoir at $3.5-million to $5-million. During a strong economy, Sen. Hillary Clinton received an $8-million advance for her 2003 White House memoir, Living History, which was published by Simon & Schuster. That book … was a hit, earning back its advance after only one week.

Memoirs by First Ladies are a dime a dozen, but this one has the potential to be a bit more interesting than most. Before Laura met George, she was generally known as a left-leaning type, and throughout her husband’s time in office she mostly kept her thoughts and feelings to herself. Who knows, maybe she’ll reveal that she was a mole for the ACLU all along.

Publishers cool on the notion of George W. Bush memoir

Soon-to-be-ex American president George W. Bush is contemplating a memoir of his eight years spent screwing up the country in power, but publishers are not champing at the bit to take it on.

According to the Huffington Post, a president who is leaving office with an approval rating in the low 20s is not in the best position to be shopping a book, especially during a period of economic bedlam uncertainty.

“If I were advising President Bush, given how the public feels about him right now, I think patience would probably be something that I would encourage,” says Paul Bogaards, executive director of publicity for Alfred A. Knopf, which in 2004 released Bill Clinton’s million-selling My Life.

“Certainly the longer he waits, the better,” says Marji Ross, president and publisher of the conservative Regnery Publishing, which is more likely to take on anti-Obama books in the next few years than any praises of Bush.

Of course, Bush is not known for his patience, and he apparently fancies himself a latter-day Harry Truman, a president whose reputation upon leaving office was in tatters, but has subsequently been bolstered by history. Nevertheless, publishers are uncertain about the marketablilty of a book by such a reviled public figure, and at least one popular author has called the idea “resistable.”

Curtis Sittenfield, whose novel American Wife features a thinly veiled Laura Bush as the title character, says that a book by the first lady would have more traction than one by her husband:

“When I give readings, a disproportionate number of people who buy my book are middle-aged women who say, ‘My mother loves Laura Bush!’ So I suspect that I and a lot of 90-year-old ladies would line up for a Laura Bush memoir on the day of publication,” Sittenfeld says.

Then again, this might just be another case of people misunderestimating the beleaguered Dubya.

Battle of the bloggers, IFOA edition

Toronto author Andrew Westoll has been doing a fine job as the official blogger for this year’s International Festival of Authors. In fact, it seems he’s been doing such a good job that National Post society columnist Shinan Govani has been ripping off his reporting – or so Westoll alleges.

The controversy (okay, the tiff) is concerning Westoll’s fly-on-the-wall account of a Friday night dinner conversation between novelist and critic Francine Prose and a handful of other IFOA authors (including Q&Q’s own Nathan Whitlock). On his blog, Westoll relates several telling details from the exchange, in which he observes Prose playing with her food (“I watched Francine pick the pepperoni off her pizza”) and overhears an anecdote concerning Laura Bush.

Govani’s write-up (scroll down) seems to draw from the same well of first-hand experience:

As the celebrated and perfectly-named Prose flicked pepperoni off her pizza, we hear, she told people about the “Laura Bush moment” she had some weeks back when she had an opportunity to visit the White House. Long story short: She kinda told the First Lady off.

The weasel word here is the vague “we hear” embedded in the first sentence. The verdict: while this isn’t an example of straight-up plagiarism, a hat-tip to Westoll would have been the gentlemanly thing to do.

Bookmarks: learning to read at the Bush Library, borrowing people instead of books, and picking the right beer for the book

Some book-related links:

• Bush Library to be base for literacy and education, says Laura Bush* (The Dallas Morning News)
• A library where you can borrow people instead of books (InfoSpeak.org)
• We’ve picked the right wine for a book, but what about the right beer? (Omnivoracious)
• Are comic books good for you? (Popmatters)
• Bonus Tween Content: Miley Cyrus to write memoir (Stuff)

* she then said: “What? What’s so funny?”

Hey, Laura Bush is a reader, too

And her reading list is a little racier than her husband’s. The Washington Post‘s Tamara Jones spoke with the American first lady about books, in honour of the upcoming National Book Festival.

Bush had some infinitely quotable things to say: “I will admit to reading books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover in high school, where you had a fake cover on the outside of the book and read it during math.”

Bush “breezily” admitted to having read “steamier” books since then, but avoided naming titles. She even turned to the librarian of Congress and said, “It’s hard even having to name ones that are steamy, don’t you think, Dr. Billington?”

No doubt someone with access to the White House library will be going through the collection, shelf by shelf, keeping a keen eye out for “fake covers” on Bush’s bodice-rippers.

Related links:
Read Jones’ interview with Bush here

Pens and swords

This week, The Nation posted a letter written by poet Sharon Olds to First Lady Laura Bush in response to an invitation to read at the National Book Festival in Washington taking place tomorrow, the day of anti-war mobilization in the capital.

Writes Olds: “The prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books, and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq.

“But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

“So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds, and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives, and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.”

Related links:
Click here for the full letter posted on The Nation‘s website