Hilary Mantel has won the Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, her densely-plotted tale of Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power in the court of Henry VIII. The judges were split between Mantel and a rival author, whose identity they did not disclose. In the end, a secret ballot came out 3-2 in favour of Wolf Hall. The other shortlisted writers were JM Coetzee and AS Byatt, both former Booker winners, alongside Sarah Waters, Simon Mawer and Adam Foulds. A flurry of bets on Mantel in the weeks leading up to the announcement led William Hill to cut her odds from 16/1 to 10/11, fearing a sting. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booker-prize/6267010/Hilary-Mantel-wins-Man-Booker-Prize-for-Wolf-Hall.html#

The German author Herta Müller has won the 2009 Nobel Prize for literature for works inspired by—and often portraying—life under Nicolae Ceausescu’s dictatorship in her native Romania. The Swedish Academy, which awards the £895,000 prize, hailed Müller, 56, as a writer who "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed". http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6866020.ece

For Edgar Allan Poe, 2009 has been a better year than 1849. One hundred sixty years ago, the beleaguered, impoverished Poe was found, delirious and in distress outside a Baltimore tavern. He was never coherent enough to explain what had befallen him since leaving Richmond, Va., a week earlier. He spent four days in a hospital before he died at age 40. Poe's cousin, Neilson Poe, never announced his death publicly. Fewer than 10 people attended the hasty funeral for one of the 19th century's greatest writers. And the injustices piled on. Poe's tombstone was destroyed before it could be installed, when a train derailed and crashed into a stonecutter's yard. Rufus Griswold, a Poe enemy, published a libelous obituary that damaged Poe's reputation for decades. But on Sunday, October 11, Poe's funeral will get an elaborate do-over, with two services expected to draw about 350 people each. Actors portraying Poe's contemporaries and other long-dead writers and artists will pay their respects, reading eulogies adapted from their writings about Poe. On Sunday morning, a horse-drawn carriage will transport the replica of Poe's body from his former home to the graveyard for the funeral.
Eulogies will follow from actors portraying, among others, Sarah Helen Whitman, a minor poet whom Poe courted after his wife's death, and Walt Whitman, who attended the dedication of Poe's new gravestone in 1875 but didn't feel well enough to speak. Writers and artists influenced by Poe, including Arthur Conan Doyle and Alfred Hitchcock, will also be represented. http://gazettetimes.com/news/national/article_6b9a3165-24a2-524a-9937-9dcaeb47572.html

The set of four volumes of Edgar Allan Poe’s writings edited by Rufus Wilmot Griswold and printed by J. S. Redfield was the first attempt at collecting poetry and prose, and the critical, editorial and miscellaneous writings. Relying on a wealth of manuscript notes and corrections, it is also the last collection to be at least partially authorized by Poe. It became the standard edition of Poe’s works for 25 years, and served as the model for nearly another quarter of a century. It is also the edition upon which Charles Baudelaire based his famous translations of Poe’s works into French in Histoires Extraordinaires (1856), Nouvelles Histoires Extraordinaires (1857) and Histoires Grotesques Et Sérieuses (1865).
The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe (The Griswold Edition) (1850-1856)
Volume I: Tales (First printed, with volume II, by January 10, 1850, although advertised as early as December 8, 1849)
Volume II: Poems and Miscellanies (First printed, with volume I, by January 10, 1850)
Volume III: The Literati, &c. (Advertised as early as September 21, 1850)
Volume IV: Arthur Gordon Pym, &c. (Advertised beginning on March 8, 1856)
Read the controversial history of these volumes at:
http://www.eapoe.org/WorkS/editions/griswold.htm

A few months ago, 71-year-old Chrissie Maher got a mailing from her bank titled "Personal and Private Banking—Keeping You Informed." Baffled by its blizzard of terms such as "account facility limit," Ms. Maher replied in simpler language. "The leaflet needs much more thought if it is to be understood by your customers," she said in a letter to Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC. "As it stands, it should be renamed 'Keeping You Confused.' " After critiquing the pamphlet's "tortuous and ambiguous sentences," she redrafted it, changing terms like "maximum debit balance" to "the most that can be owed." The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission codified good writing in 1998 with its Securities Act Rule 421(d)—or in plain English, the "Plain English Rule"—which applies to the cover page for a prospectus. The rule outlines six principles for good writing, including using the "active voice" and not using "multiple negatives."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125476135344665075.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories

Chatosphere: that part of cyberspace where internet chatters meet

Barack Obama is the target of more than 30 potential death threats a day and is being protected by an increasingly over-stretched and under-resourced Secret Service, according to a new book. Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5967942/Barack-Obama-faces-30-death-threats-a-day-stretching-US-Secret-Service.html#

The first step in discerning the source of the "Should Obama be Killed?" Facebook poll has been taken. Jesse Farmer, of Bumbalabs in Palo Alto, Calif., has given permission for Facebook to reveal that he was the developer, but, significantly, not the author. The poll, which was removed by Facebook when it was brought to the site's
attention, offered those who wished to enjoy such an exercise four potential answers. More than 730 people participated before it was removed. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10363336-71.html

Muammar Gaddafi's personal translator broke down towards the end of the Libyan leader's meandering 94-minute United Nations speech on September 23 and had to be rescued by a UN Arabic speaker. The Libyan translator matched the "Brother Leader of the Revolution" word-for-word for 90 minutes before collapsing from exhaustion, just after Mr Gaddafi denounced the popular Ottawa Treaty outlawing landmines. Colonel Gaddafi ended up speaking six times longer than the 15-minute limit set by the UN General Assembly. But he did not even come close to Fidel Castro's 1960 General Assembly record of four and a half hours. The longest-ever U.N. speech was delivered by V. K. Krishna Menon, who spent nearly eight hours defending India’s position on Kashmir to the Security Council in January 1957.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6849070.ece#

McDonald’s plans to open a restaurant in November near the entrance of Paris’ Louvre museum. The chain has confirmed that its 1,142nd French outlet will open in the underground approach to the art museum. The McDonald's on the famed Champs-Elysees Avenue is the most profitable in the world, he said. The interview was published in the economic daily Les Echos, the same source reported. McDonald's confirmed that a restaurant will open next month. The Louvre confirmed it will be positioned in the underground approach to the Louvre, known as the Carrousel du Louvre, according to Telegraph. The stonewalled gallery was opened in 1993, five years after the famous Louvre pyramid. http://www.finchannel.com/Main_News/Business/48662_McDonald_to_open_its_restaurants_at_Paris%E2%80%99_Louvre/#

October 9 is the birthday of historian Bruce Catton, (books by this author) born in Petoskey, Michigan (1899). He served in the Navy during WWI, then became a reporter, and in 1943 he became information director for the War Production Board in D.C. He wrote a book about his experience, The War Lords of Washington (1948), and even though no one paid any attention to it, it inspired him to become a writer. He started researching the Civil War and writing about it, but he had trouble getting his first book published. Instead of writing history as a straightforward account of facts, he wrote it like a story, and publishers thought that no one would be interested in reading history that way. But finally he published Mr. Lincoln's Army (1951), the first book in a trilogy he wrote about the Army of the Potomac, which was followed by Glory Road(1952), and then his most famous book, A Stillness at Appomattox (1953), which won the Pulitzer Prize for history and the National Book Award.
On October 9, 1872 the first mail-order catalog was delivered. It was sent out by Aaron Montgomery Ward, and it was just one page long, listing 162 items. By the mid-1880s, the catalog was more than 200 pages long and sold 10,000 items. The Writer’s Almanac