The biggest shock concerning the Man Booker Prize shortlist was not the omission of Salman Rushdie, but the secrecy in the days between the judges' meeting and the announcement of the six titles. To guard against confidential prize news getting out, this year the organisers gave shortlisted publishers notice in which to prepare for the moment when the contenders were revealed. The publishers knew of their own titles, but no one else's.

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The campaign team for John McCain has described as a “vicious smear” the notion in a Time magazine profile that Sarah Palin, his running-mate for US President, once tried her hand at book censorship. The team admits that, when Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin “asked the librarian how she could go about banning books”. But the question was “rhetorical ... nothing more”.

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Some writers work for a set number of hours a day, others produce a set number of words. Matt Richtel is more precise. He is writing a novel, Twiller, through the micro-blogging service Twitter at a rate of 140 characters a day - the maximum that the service allows. A “growing number” of followers are reading the story at that rate.

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The family of an Arab man killed in a terrorist attack has made a notable gesture towards reconciliation by funding the translation into Arabic of a novel by the Israeli writer Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness. George Khoury's killer mistook him for a Jew. Now his family has contributed to the cost of the translation to promote the cause of coexistence. It is only the third Arabic translation of a work by Oz.

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There is a theory that the easy life in the West prevents our writing great literature. The theory receives backing in a story on the radio station NPR, which quotes Russian writers as saying that the authoritarianism of the country has offered them a “treasure trove” of material.

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