http://www.nypress.com/articles.sec-24-1-24_7-books.html Most coverage of the press around underground poster boy John Wray paints the 37 year-old as a roguish, self-indulgent author. The unorthodox approach he takes to promotion provides his books with talking points beyond their literary laurels. His stunts continue this week with a YouTube video starring him and friend Zach Galifianakis, promoting the paperback release of Wray’s third book, Lowboy. But the inflated treatments of Wray’s endorsement capers don’t give the author fair shake for being a modern literary pragmatist, infusing both his work and promotions for them with only what is required to get his point across.]]> ZACHARY GERMAN IS sitting at a table in the back of Coffee Time.The cafe is on the corner of Bleecker Street and Bowery. Zachary has short brown hair and is wearing oversized glasses and a tie underneath a sweater. He is drinking an iced soy latte. Its 5 oclock.]]> This debut collection follows a single narrator through nine stories and 30 years as the world worsens and deteriorates..]]> At first glance, the premise of cartoonist and author Ted Rall’s autobiographical graphic novel The Year of Loving Dangerously reads like pure porno fantasy. After being kicked out of Columbia University, dumped by his girlfriend and fired from his job all in a matter of weeks, a broke and homeless Rall found a creative way to ensure a roof over his head throughout the summer of 1984: bedding a bevy of Manhattan women. Actually making it work proved a complicated mixture of carnal delights and desperation.]]> Whereas Illinois native Joshua Ferris, author of the award-winning debut novel Then We Came to the End, voluntarily relocated to New York, the protagonist of his thoughtful and unsettling second novel, The Unnamed, finds that a force beyond his control governs his physical movement. New Yorker Tim Farnsworth is a happily married father of one, and a full partner in a prestigious law firm.Yet when a strange affliction of which he has suffered two bouts in the past returns, this time for good, he must grapple with “the enormity of a crumbling life.” ]]> The photographer, painter and New York native explores the fuzzy world of dogs and hairy men in this photo collection..]]> Dance of Days, Mark Anderson and Mark Jenkins’ two-decade history of punk rock in Washington, D.C. was first released in 2001 and quickly became a touchstone in the realm of such books. Now, almost nine years later, the duo has updated the book for the second time (another edition was published in 2003 and this one is out on Brooklyn’s own Akashic Books) with new chapters and updates on the city’s punk rumblings since the book’s original release.]]> This debut novel tells the story of Ja Feng, who is arrested in Maoist China, locked away in solitary confinement and then released into the world a broken, shattered man, where he attempts to reclaim his life..]]> Mickey Leigh may have slept with Joey Ramone, but it was nothing special. Joey snored and he hogged the sheets. But they were only sleeping and Joey was there to comfort Mickey, who was having a nightmare—the two are brothers after all. ]]> 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.]]>