Too busy for sex?

Fear not! The latest clutch of sex guides are full of advice for people with no time to Do It. But who has the time to even read about sex these days? To save you the trouble, Lucy Mangan sifts through Mating in Captivity et al for some top tips.

Bad chemistry

The Vitamin Murders by James Fergusson allows Josh Lacey to examine the shocking and unexpected consequences of a real-life murder.

Their cluck just ran out

Hattie Ellis's compassionate condemnation, Planet Chicken, exposes the atrocious practices of modern poultry farming, says Paul Levy.

How to win the game of life, by Garry Kasparov

Stephen Moss: Gary Kasparov, the former world chess champion is in London promoting his self-help book, How Life Imitates Chess, and has been enticed to the Stowe Centre in Paddington, west London by BBC2's The Culture Show, which is making a programme about inner-city chess.

Question time

Dorothy Rowe on sibling rivalry, having a mother who couldn't love and the difference between unhappiness and depression.

How we learned to stop having fun

We used to know how to get together and really let our hair down. Then, in the early 1600s, a mass epidemic of depression broke out - and we've been living with it ever since. Something went wrong, but what? Barbara Ehrenreich unpicks the causes of our unhappiness.

Passion for life

Dina Rabinovitch shows that living with serious illness strips the soul of all pretence in Take Off Your Party Dress: When Life's Too Busy for Breast Cancer, says Meg Rosoff.

Eating through the ages

Boiled cow's udder, anyone? Or a ragout of pig's ear? Norman Miller leafs through chef Anton Mosimann's extraordinary library of antiquarian cookbooks.

All in the mind?

Hilary Mantel enjoys some intriguing speculations on the link between body and mind in Jan Lars Jensen's Nervous System and Why Do People Get Ill? by Darian Leader and David Corfield.