Cox Newspapers Washington reporter Ken Herman wonders if the National Book Festival's future is uncertain. Before you get too concerned, though, be advised that all Librarian of Congress James Billington has to say on the subject is this: "We hope it will live beyond the Bush administration... We can't prejudge that. We certainly think it has become something of a national tradition." This year's festival, the seventh since Laura Bush got the privately funded ball rolling in 2001, will be held on the National Mall on September 29, with seventy-one authors attending. (And if you're not completely literati-ed out after that, you can mosey over to Baltimore Sunday for the final day of its book festival...)

In a related story, Laura Bush doesn't read books about her husband, and she has no current plans for a memoir, and she doesn't keep a diary, which cynics might speculate has less to do with her busy life than her husband's penchant for not leaving anything subpoenable behind.