When book promotion offers TMI (too much information)

Show of hands: who's planning to buy a copy of Maureen McCormick's new autobiography? If you're asking, "Who's Maureen McCormick," you're excused from answering. But, for the other 95% of us, let's be honest. We want to read the life story of Marcia Brady's alter ego, don't we? If it was even half as much fun as Greg's book -- well, that is, Barry Williams' book -- then we owe it to ourselves to buy a copy.

But, as we're seeing from all the book promotion ops (Maureen got a gig on the "Today Show," for pity's sake -- click here to see the video clip), this book probably won't be a laugh riot. We're not talking about a teenager dating her television parent. We're talking about...well, you'd better navigate away from this page now if you were a huge "Brady" fan who doesn't want to be crushed...drugs, syphilis, mental institutions, depression, domestic violence, and more (involving either Maureen herself or some of her family members).

Yuck.

A bigger "Brady Bunch" fan than me, you will not find. I loved Maureen, and I can name all of the Brady kids faster than I can tick off all the names of Sarah Palin's kids (the Brady kids' names were a whole lot more common, of course, but even so). And I'm happy that another "Brady kid" has lived to tell us what it was really like to be a member of the Brady clan.

And I'm tickled for Maureen's sake that her book was deemed worthy of a pop on one of the national morning talk shows.

But...fans? And others? Is there a time when book promotion opportunities might provide too close of a look at someone's life? Is there a situation in which TMI is TMI, no matter how grateful you might be for an author's contribution to your life? If so, then I'd have to respectfully submit that this is it.

Maureen, I love you. I truly do. And, yes, I'm going to buy a copy of your book.

But -- read it? I don't know. I'm not sure yet that I want to know that much about you. Forgive me, Maureen. But I'm just not sure. (Chris Knight, where's you're autobiography? Now, that one, I'll read.)