What am I doing here?

Deft, unfathomable, intensely likable - Vampire Weekend, who tour the UK next month, have been hailed as the next big thing. Elif Batuman succumbs to the charm of a certain kind of pop music

Say it again, Iggy

David Sinclair applauds Dan Kennedy's comic insight into music's business machine, Rock On

‘I am not shy’

A life in music: Composer and conductor Pierre Boulez has endured poisonous rows on the new music scene and vilification in the press, yet he insists that disagreement is helpful

Talk about hot air

Nigel Lawson's An Appeal to Reason says climate change isn't real - so all the experts must be wrong. And one day polar bears will fly, says Robin McKie

Nice work: David Lodge

David Lodge may be a self-confessed neurotic, but his genius at turning small personal tragedies into the stuff of humour have made him one of Britain's best-loved comic writers. Here, he talks to Rachel Cooke about his depression and deafness

And my chosen subject is me

In two additions to the confessional memoir, Lorna Martin's Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown uses humour to tell its story while Rebecca Walker's Baby Love just seethes, says Olivia Laing

Against the grain

Daphna Baram salutes Mike Marqusee's honest appraisal of his radical journey through religion and politics, If I Am Not for Myself

Fuelling the debate on climate change

Nigel Lawson's An Appeal to Reason highlights some important questions about climate change, although he offers few answers, says Richard Lambert

With friends like these . . .

When David Mamet declared last month that he was no longer a 'brain-dead liberal', he joined the ranks of leftwing writers, from Arthur Koestler to Kinglsey Amis to Christopher Hitchens, who have moved to the right and attacked former allies. Playwright David Edgar challenges the new generation of renegades

Page turners

Before the 20th century, artists were subservient to authors in the creation of books, but that changed with the birth of the livre d'artiste, or artist's book. Since then, texts have been cut open, painted over, burnt and locked up. Blake Morrison browses through novel works by Henri Matisse, Joseph Cornell and Paula Rego

Murder, he wrote

PD Smith dissects Colin Evans's fascinating story of the original crime scene investigator, The Father of Forensics

The firebird of Gordon Square

Kathryn Hughes applauds Judith Mackrell's biography of the Russian dancer who appalled Bloomsbury's snobs and stole Keynes's heart, The Bloomsbury Ballerina

Reciprocal liberties

Joanna Briscoe commends Carole Seymour-Jones dazzling portrait of Sartre and De Beauvoir's relationship, A Dangerous Liason

Causing a commotion

Guardian book club: Edna O'Brien recalls the furore surrounding publication of The Country Girls