Best Of MetaFilter

Book Cover for Gaudy Night

In Ask Metafilter, azalea_chant investigates recs for golden age or other older mysteries that stand the test of time.

In Ask Metafilter, Phanx is seeking cookbook joke titles that are puns on classic literature, "eg ‘Loaf of Pi’ or ‘Bun day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,’" while mermaidcafe would like ideas for "Southern Slothic fiction titles." Time to put your mighty lowest-form-of-humor skills to work, everyone!

Photo by Daniel Hargrave, via Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/danielhargrave/) Are you looking for NON-erotic sci-fi stories about humans being kept as pets by aliens? Well over in Ask MetaFilter, so is PikeMatchbox and MeFites are chiming in with their recommendations! Be a good hooman and check it out!

Go to hell? Ok fine, the United Kingdom has a large selection of entrances that will allow one to do that, complete with some true-ish backstories. Just step this way, dmd will hold the door...

Art by Eddi van W. on Flickr

Ask Me synchronicity ... 18 years later: In 2006, ninazer0 asked for help identifying three works of English Juvenile Historical Fiction, later finding the answer to one of the mystery texts. In 2024, tangerine asked about mid-century kids' historical fiction about the Hanseatic League, and paduasoy's suggestion was not the author OP was looking for, but it did resolve the earlier mystery. Then melisande added more info for the earlier question. Delightful!

You are looking for something interesting on the internet. Do you: A. Choose a random post on MetaFilter B. Click the link for a look back on the Choose Your Own adventure book series

Sci Fi Park by Julio A Gonzalez (cc by)

Sci Fi / paranormal shows minus the horror? Member Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... has a big! big! list. Blam!

A selection of Kathleen Sully’s novels via neglectedbooks.com

"Kathleen Sully's name appears in no encyclopaedia, in no dictionary of biography, in no other survey of the English novel" ... BenAstrea posted Brad Bigelow's NeglectedBooks.com article "Kathleen Sully, the Vanished Novelist," a nice bit of detective work on an author who seemed to continually mystify her contemporaries.

The black sheep in the family by CazzJj

Rebent's collection of insomnia busters to keep the brain bots at bay

keyhole face 2 by leketoys (cc by)

In Ask Metafilter, darchildre is looking for locked room mysteries in any medium

The Houses of Parliament (Effect of Fog), Claude Monet

You are a man of guile, means and influence in Victorian England and you know what orders to give to get the following done. You want to have a patient kidnapped from a hospital and secretly installed with people you trust. We're helping Omnomnom abduct(?) liberate(?) a gent from a British infirmary in the 1800s. What could go wrong?

Pancake Crescent Moon with Earthshine by Dawn Sunrise (cc by-nc-nd)

What would be the logistics of making pancakes on the moon? freethefeet needs to know.

Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Club français du livre, 1964) by -ep- (cc by)

I'm reading Moby Dick. It's fun! But I'm sure I'm missing a lot. This is where you come in ... wooh is looking for good explanations and analyses for our favorite great white whale.

Protected by Meanest Indian (cc by)

In Ask Metafilter, BlahLaLa says, "A character is about to blow the whistle on something very big and public, in the US. Folks will be angry about this, might raise a furor online, might threaten them or their family, might try to dox them, etc. -- all the classic bad crap that might happen nowadays. How could they guard against this before they go public? What could they do on their own, and what might they hire a security or IT professional to do?" How do you lock down your personal information?

Image via Dreamstime

In Ask Metafilter, sonofsnark is looking for "recommendations for amazing fiction writers that I am unlikely to have heard of before"