Amazon begins a new chapter with opening of first physical bookstore

World’s biggest online retailer opens store in Seattle’s University Village stocked with 6,000 books at same price as its website

From Minecraft to books: what Stampy did next after YouTube stardom

British gamer Joseph Garrett may be nervous in crowds, but he has a growing legion of young fans – and a publishing deal to make their Christmas

Reader, I tweeted him – why mobile phones are not the enemy of storytelling

Alexander McCall Smith refuses to include phones in his books. He couldn’t be more wrong about the perceived threat of technology to fiction

Sherry Turkle: ‘I am not anti-technology, I am pro-conversation’

In the social media age, we know how to connect: but are we forgetting how to talk to each other? Leading psychologist Sherry Turkle wants to fight back

Cancer blogger tops ebook chart by making peace with her illness

Sophie Sabbage’s bestseller, The Cancer Whisperer, tells how she tries to learn from the disease and not fear it

The first great works of digital literature are already being written

Video games could be the greatest storytelling medium of our age – if only the worlds of art and technology would stop arguing and take notice

Celeste Ng is right: authors shouldn’t feel forced to respond to readers

The award-winning writer kicked up a storm by asking teachers not to tell students to email her – but readers shouldn’t feel entitled to an author’s reply

Waterstones to stop selling Kindle in most stores

Retailer opens up new chapter in battle between ebooks and physical books as e-reader was ‘getting virtually no sales’

Subway Book Review glimpses the lives of New Yorkers via the books they read

Two years ago, Uli Beutter Cohen started asking people what they were reading on the subway and documenting it – now she’s taking the project to other cities

The Invention of Russia by Arkady Ostrovsky; The New Tsar by Steven Lee Myers; The Red Web by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan – review

Three new studies of Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and his authoritarian methods of stifling free speech make gloomy reading

Classic children’s books on coding reprogrammed for a new generation

Author Lisa Watts, who helped to teach a generation of children about computers a quarter of a century ago, hopes new books will inspire tomorrow’s programmers

Want a Jane Austen quote delivered to you every day? There’s an app for that

A new app developed by Bath’s Jane Austen Centre promises to make your life a little better by sending you daily quotes

Michael Fassbender: fearless performer with a craftsman’s approach to the art of acting

His three forthcoming films – Assassin’s Creed, Macbeth and Steve Jobs – function as a sort of cross-section of where the extraordinarily diverse actor now finds himself

Johnny Borrell, the dictionary, the actual Tube network – REVIEWED

Every Friday, we review things that desperately need appraising but seldom receive the critical treatment they deserve. We also review things that really don’t need appraising at all. We’ll review your suggestions too – suggest in the comments or @guideguardian