Openhearted Hillary talks politics, pantsuits
Clinton’s ‘light read’ will take global view
NEW YORK Hillary Clinton says her new memoir will be about her experiences as secretary of State, “our rapidly changing and interdependent world, and the challenges facing us” in places such as Crimea.
Or, as she put it, “just another light summer read.”
Speaking to the Association of American Publishers on Wednesday, Clinton joked about selecting a title for her fourth book, tentatively due for release in June from Simon & Schuster.
She noted several suggestions that readers of The Washington Post submitted in a contest to name Clinton’s memoir:
It Takes a World, which Clinton called a “fitting sequel” to her 1996 best seller, It Takes a Village.
Bossy Pantsuit, a reference to her affection for “all things Tina Fey,” author of the best seller Bossy Pants.
The Scrunchie Chronicles, adding her subtitle: 112 Countries and It’s Still All About My Hair.
In a mostly lighthearted 15minute speech, Clinton told the publishers that among the lessons she learned writing her best-selling 2003 memoir, Living History, is to “quit your day job.”
She said she wrote Living History at night, after her day job as a senator from New York.
This time, she joked, she’s writing “in the peace and quiet of our farmhouse in Chappaqua (N.Y.),” with “no more frantic media speculation,” a reference to the expectations that Clinton, who has been busy giving speeches, will run for president in 2016.
She also told the publishers about how the Chinese government censored anything critical of China when Living History was translated and published there.
She added that this time, her lawyer, Bob Barnett, assured her that “we have a tighter contract about the translation, so there should be no funny business. We’ll see.”
Clinton also promoted a literary program called Too Small to Fail, which the Clinton Foundation is sponsoring with First Book, a program that gets “real books in the hands of low-income children.”
She noted that more than 60% of low-income families have no books in their homes, which she says leads to a “word gap” among children entering school, which in turn leads to “an achievement gap down the road.”
She reminisced about reading Good Night, Moon and Runaway Bunny at night to her daughter, Chelsea, and seeing “her face light up, or any child’s face light up, an indication of what’s happening inside their brain.”
Clinton recalled singing at night to Chelsea — usually Moon River — until Chelsea was about 18 months old, when she put her fingers on her mom’s lip and said, “No sing, Mommy, no sing.”
That, Clinton added, “made me more of a reader.”