I spent the weekend absolutely engrossed in Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, a novel very loosely based on the life of Laura Bush, who I find fascinating. So I'm glad to hear that the first lady is planning on writing an actual memoir. Page Six also reports that nobody will give George W. Bush a book contract because he's so abysmally unpopular. We'll see. Of course, I could see a memoir by either Bush being a disappointing defense of an almost universally condemned record. And I'm not expecting Laura Bush to tell the kinds of stories Cherie Blair did in her recent memoir, Speaking for Myself. In that book, Blair, who worked as an attorney during her husband's administration, revealed that she and Tony accidentally conceived their fourth child at Balmoral Palace on a visit to the queen. Blair wrote that she left her contraceptive device at home so the lady's maid who'd empty her bag wouldn't see it. (Can you imagine an American first lady talking openly about her sex life?) She also dug into various public officials, calling Princess Margaret "a stuck-up old trapper." And oh yes, Cherie admits in the book to being a "socialist." Meanwhile, it's a big day on our side of the pond when Laura Bush admits she is pro-choice and was raised a Democrat (both true). If she has the guts to tackle those topics in her memoir, I'll hand it to her. --Dana Goldstein
