[laura bush] demure librarian speaks out

"With Lynne Cheney (Vice-President Dick Cheney's ultra-ideological wife), ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife. I was a librarian that spent 12 hours a day in the library. Yet somehow I met George."

She rolled her eyes at his love affair with his Texan ranch. "I'm proud of George. He's learnt a lot about ranching since that first year when he tried to milk a horse. What was worse - it was a male horse."

On war-mongering. "George's answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with a chainsaw. Which is I think why he and Cheney and Rumsfeld get along so well. People think [Barbara Bush is a sweet grandmotherly Aunt Bea type. She's actually more like Don Corleone."

A little note about Laura Bush’s reading habits, via Bryan Appleyard: I am indebted once again to Frank Wilson. He draws my attention to this list consisting of Laura Bush's choice of five books that 'inspired me to champion literacy'. Four of the books are predictable enough - Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Alcott's Little Women, Dr Seuss's Hop on Pop and Wilder's Little House series. But the fifth is Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.

I am at a loss. Did Mrs Bush choose the first four dutifully as sound, all-American reads and then chuck in old Dusty as a sample of what she really likes? Or was it the other way round - Karamazov to give her lit cred, the other four being her real favourites? Either way, Fyodor sticks out like a sore thumb, a raging beast behind the frosty exterior. It makes one wonder.

Diana comments … Fyedka is said to be Mrs. Bush's favorite author; this has been said of her long before Kitty Kelley's authoritative volume of the Bush family. Mrs. B is a Scorpio; lots hidden underneath that imperturbable exterior.