The other four titles in the running for the £1,000 prize are Ed Husain's account of his involvement in radical fundamentalism in The Islamist; Miranda Seymour's memoir of her father's tyrannical eccentricity, In My Father's House; Dannie Abse's memoir of his 50-year marriage written in the wake of his wife's death, The Presence; and John Lanchester's investigation of family secrets, Family Romance.

The annual award, which has been running since 1982, was established in memory of JR Ackerley, journalist and author himself of a famously candid autobiography, My Father and Myself.

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[Chairman Peter] Parker said of the shortlist: "One of the strengths of this list is that there is no common thread between the books, apart from the fact that they are all well-written, and marked by a kind of fearless, even ruthless honesty".

BusinessWeek laid off a dozen editorial and business employees amid new integration of its digital and print editorial operations. The new structure will be phased in this month.

"For the past three years, we've been moving progressively toward integrating our print and digital operations -- by increasing reporters' contributions to BusinessWeek.com, combining our overseas bureaus and copy-desk teams and seating together everyone within a given coverage area," said Editor in Chief Stephen J. Adler in an internal memo that was posted on Talking Biz News. "Today we complete this vital transformation by creating a single editorial organization for BusinessWeek. The new structure will enable us to collaborate more effectively, take greater advantage of everyone's abilities, learn new skills and serve our readers and web users better."

1. "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

The actual advice here is technically a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's "good uncle" Alex, but Vonnegut was nice enough to pass it on at speeches and in A Man Without A Country. Though he was sometimes derided as too gloomy and cynical, Vonnegut's most resonant messages have always been hopeful in the face of almost-certain doom. And his best advice seems almost ridiculously simple: Give your own happiness a bit of brainspace.

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14. "I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'science fiction' ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."

Vonnegut was as trenchant when talking about his life as when talking about life in general, and this quote from an essay in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons is particularly apt; as he explains it, he wrote Player Piano while working for General Electric, "completely surrounded by machines and ideas for machines," which led him to put some ideas about machines on paper. Then it was published, "and I learned from the reviewers that I was a science-fiction writer." The entire essay is wry, hilarious, and biting, but this line stands out in particular as typifying the kind of snappishness that made Vonnegut's works so memorable.

Rowling testified as a result of a joint lawsuit brought by her estate and Warner Brothers (the films' producers) against RDR Books to stop the publication of "The Harry Potter Lexicon," a reference book culled from thousands of pages of information posted on HP-Lexicon.org.

"I really don't want to cry, because I'm British. ... These characters meant so much to me, and continue to mean so much to me, over such a long period of time," Rowling was quoted as saying under oath. "It's very difficult for someone who is not a writer to understand. The closest I can come is to say to someone: 'How do you feel about your child?' "

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"I believe this book constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work. It adds little if anything by way of commentary ... and it debases what I worked so hard to create," she said in court. If the judge allows for the "Lexicon" to be published, Rowling thinks it will have longstanding effects on the relationship between authors and their biggest Internet fans.

"If RDR's position is accepted, it will undoubtedly have a significant, negative impact on the freedoms enjoyed by genuine fans on the Internet," she wrote in a pretrial statement to the court. "Authors everywhere will be forced to protect their creations much more rigorously."