Best Of MetaFilter

reading by Seniju (cc by)

Throwback Thursday to 2014: 'joseph conrad is fully awesome' posted links about short novels, aka things you could read in one sitting. Come for the books, stay for the additional recommendations in the comments!

These “forgotten papyrus” scrolls existed circa 1100 B.C. ... 1100 B.C.!! (*feeling very small*) Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History) Vienna, Austria by Sharon Hahn Darlin (cc by)

Love in an Orchard, as Written by the Trees. Donating Kittens to the Goddess Bastet. Parental Grief. Same-Sex Love Spells. A Runaway Child Bride. Rumple's post highlights various vignettes of ancient Middle Eastern life from the Papyrus Stories Group Blog.

"We probably don't go around thinking of Agatha Christie as leaving a 'residue of horror' except that is one of its pleasures, isn't it? These people live in a world even more dangerous than our own--piles of strychnine, whole truckloads of it, just lying about, waiting for you to slight the wrong person and wind up dead."

Mittens has a great comment about crime fiction, crime writing, and crime writers in the Agatha Christie thread.

Movie Tickets (cc by-sa)

Week 2 of Metafilter Events is here! "Following Week 1, we’re back with more as we kick off a week about books, fiction and the humanities." This looks so great.

🎁 MetaFilter Gift Swap Sign-Ups end Nov 1

✍🏼 Mochapickle's Nahhhh-NoWriMo: A zero stress, no rules writing month begins Nov 1

⭐️ Mefi Posts for "Sale" is still going! jessamyn, Rhaomi, and Eyebrows McGee are offering to write posts for contributions to the Mefi fundraising drive

Mystery Writers by Nanagyei (cc by)

mochapickle will be doing a zero-stress no-rules November writing month on Metafilter's IRL✍🏼

Writer's Block I by Drew Coffman (cc by)

If you haven't checked it out yet, Cozybee has collected 50+ bookmarks for writers and aspiring writers, including worksheets, where to submit, advice for outlining, plotting, breaking through writer's block, worldbuilding, character development, and much more!

Wim Wenders' 'Until the End of the World' mentioned by under_petticoat_rule

what are some of the most egregious examples of sloppy screenplay work that have resulted in a TV or movie character doing something or drawing conclusions that no actual person would ever do IRL?

In Ask Metafilter, helloimjennsco asks for examples of Lousy character logic in movies and/or TV shows

My current job is reading novels and what's called "writing coverage" on them. (Coverage is the entertainment industry equivalent of a book report, wherein people like me read things so that more important people can pretend they read them.) I read 2-3 novels per week, mostly self-published genre novels.

Sara C. has an interesting job, and some good advice on context, details, sources and backgrounds for historical fiction, in answer to the question, "what were the details of everyday life in late 16th century Italy?"

Famous fantasy author Neil Gaiman recently did a great commencement address at the University of the Arts (embedded above) and it is currently making the rounds. MeFi member Rory Marinich was in the audience and recounts the experience:

As great as I'm sure this speech is as standalone inspiration, for our graduating class everything Neil said really struck home. Art school is a weirdly draining and exhausting place, and I think that caught a lot of us off guard – definitely me; I'm just getting over a panic attack that hit in waves over the course of a very rough last week. The weirdness isn't that it's exhausting (I'm sure all colleges are like that), but that it comes from the same thing that also makes art school exhilarating: the freedom you have to pursue your own creative path, to be as strange and as personal as you can bear being.

Computer Room by Sam Howzit (cc by)

Whenever I have to spend my days cranking out lines of code or copy, if I end up working in a noisy place, I'm constantly looking for mellow instrumental music that can help filter out noise without being so distracting I can't think. Lucky for me (and anyone else), member Doeful Creature posted about the site musicForProgramming(); which compiles a variety of ambient tracks into one-hour mp3 files you can play while working. They even offer a podcast feed to keep up with new episodes automatically.

For any writers or programmers working in noisy environments (offices/cafés), musicForProgramming(); looks like a killer way to find new music to work by.