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That talking head behind the lectern yammering on about quantitative methods must be collecting mad buck and rolling in tenure, right? By now, you understand that professors are often slumming it like the rest of us — grasping at prestige and working side jobs to get by. In Mickey Hess' experience, that means being the neighborhood ice cream man while shifting among three different colleges as a part-time professor. A Rider University professor and Philadelphia resident, Hess may not have had the smoothest teaching career, but at least he got an engaging novel out of it.

—Kelly White

By Mickey Hess, Garrett County Press, 230 pp., $13.95.

Wal-Mart and other big boxes have proliferated over the last 25 years — to the delight of shoppers and the dismay of community activists. But neither party predicted that, as megastores gave way to supercenters, Wal-Mart would end up with twice as much land under its control. The 10 communities profiled in Big Box Reuse, however, have turned empty big boxes into assets — from charter schools to senior centers — taking advantage of large floor plans, tons of parking and desirable locations. It's not all high-minded civic stuff, either: One of the big boxes was made into a go-kart track; another is the deliciously upgraded home of the Spam Museum.

—Andrew Zitcer

By Julia Christensen, MIT Press, 220 pp., $29.95.

There are neither hippos nor tanks in this collaborative, heretofore-unpublished novel; the phrase merely comes from a report of a zoo fire Kerouac and Burroughs heard on the radio news. They thought it sounded bad-ass and co-opted it, which says a lot about how green the authors were in 1945: Kerouac had only the unpublished Orpheus Emerged under his belt; Burroughs was still eight years away from Junkie. Here, the two alternate chapters, a lively approach, and their rich descriptions of hedonism in WWII-era Times Square rival their associate John Clellon Holmes. Hippos can be maddeningly meandering, and by the story's fatal end, there's no wondering why it remained under wraps until now.

—John Vettese

By Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, Grove Press, 224 pp., $24.

After 15 years of potshots from grumbling critics, Robert Pollard finally went and found himself an editor. While the erstwhile Guided By Voices visionary continues to expand his nebulous discography (with five albums conceived this year alone), Town of Mirrors: The Reassembled Imagery of Robert Pollard marks Pollard's first hardcover foray into the world of visual art. The cut 'n' paste collages herein acknowledge a debt to montage megastar Winston Smith and Marvel Comics auteur Jack Kirby, but Pollard's signature juxtaposition of "the creamy" and "the fucked-up" is as recognizable here as it is on records like Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes. Sly references to the ever-expanding Pollard universe abound, making this a generous stocking stuffer for any "Church of Bob" acolyte.

—Jakob Dorof

By Robert Pollard, Fantagraphics, 136 pp., $29.99.

Nerve.com started 10 years ago with the express purpose of writing about sex explicitly and honestly. This commemorative anthology of the Web site's finest writing is more than just hipsters bragging about their sex lives: Highlights include a five-page excerpt of the Starr report and a woman's confessions of sexual fantasies about NPR commentators. And with writers like Chuck Palahniuk, Aimee Bender and Alice Sebold at the helm, the essays are equal parts smart, smutty and devastatingly human.

—Campbell States

By the editors of nerve.com, Chronicle, 272 pp., $40.