http://www.nypress.com/articles.sec-24-1-24_7-books.html Lots of great ideas start with a night of heavy drinking—it’s the actual execution that normally suffers. Not so for Hard Case Crime. Charles Ardai and Max Phillips founded the Upper West Side-based publishing house to reintroduce readers to the hardboiled crime fiction of pulp novels five years ago after a night at the bar turned their typical discussion of a mutual love for the genre into plans for a pulp publishing company.]]> KingCon Nov. 7 & 8, The Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 4th Ave. (at President St.), Brooklyn, 718-857-48916; times vary, $7 and up Brooklyn celebrates its own rich graphic novelist and comic geek ]]> Cornflakes With John Lennon: And Other Tales From a Rock N’ Roll Life By Robert Hilburn, Out now This book of essays by the former L.A. Times rock critic looks over his career at the musicians and music that shaped rock ‘n’ roll.]]> Taking a road trip after graduating college isn’t a novel idea, but for Nona Willis Aronowitz and Emma Bee Bernstein, the prospect of driving cross-country was something a little different. ]]> There was a time when concert photography was an art. Someone with a good camera, a trained eye and a passion for music would crawl to the front of a stage and plant himself there, waiting to capture something about a performer that would make for a moving portrait. Indeed, rock photography was an art form. And while today there are still top-notch photographers following bands—despite many of them being shuffled out of the pit in front of the stage after a measly three songs—what’s far more prevalent is the obnoxious glow of cell phone screens as fans spend entire concerts snapping their own photos to upload to Facebook, Flickr or a surplus of other sites.]]> Ours is a cellular city, a tangled organism built of bricks with distinct walls. You can leave your life completely without leaving the five boroughs. This week those worlds offer portals from homoerotic ass-kicking to novel reading to moon landings. And all you need is a Metrocard.]]> FOR THE PAST nine years, Jessica Stockton Bagnulo has known she wanted to own and operate her own bookstore. Now, she has the opportunity to peddle classics, cookbooks, graphic novels and more at Fort Greene's newest attraction, the Greenlight Bookstore.]]> IT APPEARS TO be impossible for any review of Oran Canfield’s scarred memoir Long Past Stopping to get past the first sentence without mentioning that he is the son of Jack Canfield, the self-help grifter and author of Chicken Soup for the Soul and other dreck—see? But the book is remarkable not for its author’s random paternity—Oran could have been anyone’s child and throughout much of the book, that’s exactly who he is, shuttled from relative to friend to colleague to acquaintance to stranger—but for the dry, unaffected voice and the plain unornamented language used to detail the near erasure of a soul in minute increments.]]> The Butcher By Philip Carlo, Out Now The author of Gaspipe and Iceman tells the story of Tommy “Karate” Pitera, one of the most feared mob hit men ever, and the DEA agent who hunted him down in 1980s New York. ]]>   The NY Art Book Fair Oct. 2 through 4, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, 22-25 Jackson Ave. (at 46th Ave.), Queens, 718-784- 2084; times vary, FREE Art shows only last for so long, but book]]> Nick Hornby calls to mind a certain brand of cool, like taking a spin in a 1960 Austin Healey convertible. In his sixth novel, Juliet, Naked, out this week, Hornby thankfully sticks to his pet motifs: rock ‘n’ roll, obsession, fandom, sex and afflicted relationships.]]> STEPHEN ELLIOTT HAS written about a lot of things: growing up in group homes (Happy Baby), BDSM (My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up) and the American electoral process (Looking Forward to It).]]> WE ARE TURNING into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear—fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer.”]]> DOES GOING TO a reading sound like something you’d do only as a last resort? Think again! In New York, many readings are taking place at bars. And bars are decidedly not boring. Almost all of them are free, and they offer the opportunity to see a variety of performers—known and unknown. It took an out-of-town friend, Kerry Cohen, author of the memoir Loose Girl, to help me discover Guerrilla Lit Reading Series. I’d assumed I was clued in, but even though I run my own series (In The Flesh), I discovered there was a huge world of literary happenings that I’d overlooked. ]]> “WE ARE EACH our own devil,” Oscar Wilde once remarked, “and we make this world our hell.” Beyond sounding like a Bad Seeds lyric, this is more or less the unwritten epitaph to Nick Cave’s new book, The Death of Bunny Munro.While Cave is better known for his music than his prose, it turns out that he’s a surprisingly gifted, if slightly deranged, author. Bunny Munro is Cave’s second novel since his 1989 debut, And the Ass Saw the Angel, and if his new book holds any autobiographical credibility, Cave has spent those years schooling himself in the ways of prodigious drinking, nonstop fucking and generalized depravity. But then, this probably isn’t a fair statement. ]]> THEY MAY BE small, but short stories have been getting a lot of ink lately.This year, the Pulitzer Prize and the Man Booker International award both went to short story writers, and masters of the form like John Cheever, Donald Barthelme and Flannery OConnor have all gotten the biographical treatment in 2009.]]> Moores first novel in 15 years is a comingof-age story set in a Midwestern college town, half a continent away from New York but still living in the shadow of 9/11. To Sound in the Know: Known more for her short stories, Moore published her first collection at the age of 26.]]> HOOKERS AND SEX WORKERS are known for their artifice in the world of pleasure, but the title of a new book written by those who play for pay is 100 percent perfunctory: Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money and Sex.]]> Back in the years before tough-actin’Tinactin, there was tough actin’ Melvin Van Peebles who, judging from the title of his new book, Confessions of an Ex-Doofus Itchyfooted Mutha, suffered from foot fungus. The graphic novel is based on an upcoming movie by Van Peebles about a badass drifter. I wonder who plays that part? Just kidding. It’s him because that’s who he is.]]> Better By John O’Brien, Out Aug. 1 A parade of dreamy, hedonistic characters drink, cavort and collide in an L.A. mansion in this posthumously published novel from the author of Leaving Las Vegas. ]]>