The specialist book supplier Dance Books is finally closing up, due to the ill health of its longtime proprietor. David Leonard’s little shop long embellished Cecil Court, one of the alleys of literature off Charing Cross Road, London, until 10 years ago he moved out to a former bakery in Hampshire focusing on publishing Dance Now, the last serious dance magazine of ideas, and mail order books retail.

This year the Eurozone is going to be the big political subject; fragmentation the looming concern. Culturally too, one would think that Europe, with 23 official languages, and another 60 minority languages spoken, is too much of a warren to be able to find any possible unanimity. But two ambitious projects are afoot in Brussels: to enable the translating of major literature across languages, and to join up all the museums, galleries and centres of knowledge in one great cultural cornucopia. And before you mutter that this is as exciting as sprouts, think for a moment of the implications - an online equivalent of a vast library of all the major known cultures, a gigantic linking of the great libraries, museums, galleries and universities in a single place for all humanity to access.

“There is a sense I very much get about this place. Italians know what life is for and they know it won’t last very long. And so they take advantage. I like that. Particularly at my age.” The last of several times I interviewed the British crime writer Michael Dibdin (1947-2007) was four years before his death. It was a freezing February morning in Bologna, where he was researching the 10th and (it turned out) penultimate book in the Aurelio Zen series. The interview was at 9am. In the fug of a crowded bar, Dibdin soaked up several espressi and a warming tot of grappa.

It is rare that you read a book, and mentally shout “Yes! Yes!” as you tick off all the things you agree with, but had never actually verbalised. It is even rarer to read a book where, in a subject you know pretty well, on almost every page you learn at least one fascinating new thing. But Jennifer Homans’ Apollo’s Angels is that book.

Russia marks the centenary of the death of Leo Tolstoy on 20 November – but the level of local tribute to one of the country’s greatest writers seems markedly muted for a figure two of whose novels, Anna Karenina and War and Peace, are regularly ranked in Top 10 lists by writers and readers around the world. We may forget today, however, that Tolstoy almost abandoned fiction for much of the second half of his life to concentrate on social issues that saw him become a figure whose opinions were listened to around the world.

Although there are thematic links between many of the movie posters designed by Bill Gold between 1942 and 2003, especially in the talismanic use of telephones (Dial M for Murder, Klute, The Front Page) and guns (Casablanca, Deliverance, the Dirty Harry films), what’s remarkable is the range of styles he used in creating numerous iconic works. It seems unlikely that the designer responsible for the conventional rendering of James Cagney in patriotic garb in Yankee Doodle Dandy (Gold’s debut) could have conceived the frilly pink collage of My Fair Lady, the blobbed, multicoloured hippie images for Woodstock, and the upside-down nocturnal reflections of Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River (Gold’s last campaign). But he delighted, clearly, in being a visual magpie.

It's a curious fact that, for whole swathes of the music-buying public, their jazz collection has never grown beyond the ubiquitous Kind of Blue. OK, it's a seminal masterpiece which continues to sell like shovels in a snow storm. But why stop there? Perhaps the music's slightly arcane nomenclature has something to do with it: modal jazz, free jazz, fusion, bebop. Where to start?

Mick Rock (b 1948) captured some of rock's most provocative and memorable images: David Bowie at the height of his Ziggy Stardust androgyny; Debbie Harry looking every inch the Marilyn Monroe of punk; Lou Reed sweating beneath his Kabuki make-up - indeed, The Faces of Rock'n'Roll, as a new book surveying four decades of his photographs is titled.

The inaugural South Asian Literature Festival takes place in London over 10 days. It has drawn authors such as Amit Chaudhuri, Fatima Bhutto, Kenan Malik and Mohamed Hanif, as well as publishers, translators and artists (performance and graphic) connected with the region. Over and above events relating to tribal art, oral culture, travel writing, cultural offence and the literary divide (if such there be) between India and Pakistan, the festival will also feature the announcement of the shortlist for the inaugural DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, a $50,000 award recognising "writers of any ethnicity writing about South Asia and its diasporas", the winner of which will be declared at the Jaipur Literature Festival in January. Theartsdesk speaks to prize-winning Sri Lankan author Romesh Gunesekera, about the festival’s ambitions and the rude health of subcontinent literature.