As James Joyce once wrote, “Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.” Sweet, right? While we’d agree that many of the most memorable mothers in contemporary literature (some real, some fictional) tried their very best to love their progeny, in most cases it just didn’t turn out so well — for either side. Check out our list of memorable moms, and be sure to add anyone who we’ve left off in the comments.

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We were first introduced to the work of Nick Flynn after he was recommended to us by his friend and fellow writer, Stephen Elliott. After devouring his first memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, we were excited when his latest, The Ticking Is the Bomb, landed our on desk earlier this year. While Bullshit tackles the subject of Flynn’s childhood in Boston and his relationship with his father (who just happened to wander into the homeless shelter where he’d been working one night), Ticking is a much different story, focusing instead on his daughter’s impending birth and America’s obsession with torture. The former has been optioned as a film that will be directed by Paul Weitz and star Casey Affleck and Robert DeNiro.

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There are a million suggested reading lists out there, especially now that it’s the end of the year/decade/life as we know it. So how’s an aspiring literary hipster to know which books are most important in terms of street cred and general knowing-it-all-ness? We decided to go straight to the source, and to that end, we’ve collected a few of our favorite and most knowledgeable lit-hipsters’ own hit lists for your cred-building convenience.

Most of the books and stories suggested here are completely awesome, and we’re pretty confident that these people know what they’re talking about (most of them create some not-too-shabby literature themselves), so we suggest that the anti-hipsters among you might do well to read on too. After all, we mean hipster in the good way (this time).

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Stephen Elliott’s new book The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder expertly weaves together the story of the author’s writer’s block (a byproduct of his relationship with his abusive father) with the trial of Hans Reiser — a computer programmer accused of murdering his wife, Nina. The linchpin: Sean Sturgeon, Hans’ former best friend, Nina’s former lover, and a former member of San Francisco’s underground S&M scene. Now a born-again Christian, he claims to have committed eight and a half murders. Could this be one of them? Read More »