John Lanchester, always worth reading, considers Google Street View, and Google’s other ventures, all “poised on the margin between utopian and dystopian.” . . . I’ve had Vladimir Sorokin’s The Queue recommended to me on a couple of occasions, and it sits somewhere in my teetering to-read pile. Elaine Blair takes a look. . . . Alexander McCall Smith on the relationship between readers and fictional characters. . . . The bond between writers and poker. (On a related note of good news, James McManus has a history of poker coming out in the fall.)