Nicholson Baker sounds approximately the same in a webchat as in an essay – except perhaps a bit friendlier.

• John Self on the merits – greater than expected – of Gordon Burn's snooker book.

• The British Library is apparently distractingly quiet, celebrity-filled and lustful. I must be using the wrong reading room.

• The Quarterly Conversation demands, and Knopf complies.

• A matter of taste on the cover of a memoir of bulimia.