Five years of Ask.MeFi book suggestions from Human Relations and Work & Money

April 16, 2009 5:01 PM

Ask.Metafilter is over 5 years old now, with volumes of suggestions and helpful ideas. philosophistry sorted through the years of posts categorized as Human Relations and Work & Money, and created ranked listings of the books people recommended the most often: Human Relations, Work & Money. Note that each little thumbs-up icon is a link back to the post which referred to the book in question. Posted originally in Mefi by filthy light thief, but deleted.

[via mefi projects]

posted by WCityMike to MetaFilter-related at 5:01 PM (34 comments total)

Taking a deleted post from the blue and reposting it to the gray seems like bad form, regardless of the quality or provenance of the original post.

But what do I know? I really like Chicken McNuggets. They're shaped kinda like chicken feet, you know.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 5:08 PM on April 16

Wait, this is so bizarre. Is anyone else seeing this? Every comment in this thread until gman is not showing up with the time and username as a link. I thought at first it was a giant comment by gman impersonating other users.
posted by prefpara at 5:17 PM on April 16

gman - why did you just paste in the deleted thread? It's already linked.
posted by Pronoiac at 5:18 PM on April 16

If it's deleted primarily for being too metafilter-specific, reposting it in Metatalk is generally okay.

Reposting the entire content of said thread into the new metatalk is kind of weird, though, since the thread is linked in the post, and it's an ugly and distracting pile of text to boot, so I'm nixing gman's initial comment here.
posted by cortex at 5:19 PM on April 16

Um... oh.
posted by prefpara at 5:19 PM on April 16

They're shaped kinda like chicken feet, you know.

You've either never had chicken feet, or the McDonalds in Alabama are deeply, deeply fucked up.
posted by dersins at 5:20 PM on April 16

Feeling Good FTW!

You know how some people open up the Bible to random pages for life advice? Sometimes I do that with the Feeling Good book. And dammit, it's almost always helpful.

That may have been TMI. YMMV.
posted by epersonae at 5:21 PM on April 16 [1 favorite]

I'm a little disappointed that Refuse To Choose by Barbara Sher didn't make the cut. It's the one self-help book I actually bought based on an AskMe recommendation, and I love it.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 5:26 PM on April 16

You've either never had chicken feet, or the McDonalds in Alabama are deeply, deeply fucked up.

While your first assertion is definitely true and your second is probably true, I still think that if one were to batter and deep-fry a chicken foot it would sorta resemble a McNugget. You know, if the batter clung to the webbed area between the digits so that the whole thing was more blob-like.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 5:30 PM on April 16

OMG FOR POSTERITY!!!!!!
posted by iamkimiam at 5:39 PM on April 16

gman - why did you just paste in the deleted thread? It's already linked.

I have no idea what you're talking about.
posted by gman at 5:39 PM on April 16

epersonae: You know how some people open up the Bible to random pages for life advice?

That's how I use the "random" button on MetaTalk.
posted by Kattullus at 5:43 PM on April 16 [2 favorites]

Authorities report that an Alabama woman called 911 three times after McDonald’s employees told her they were out of Chicken McNuggets®. The cops said they could not respond to such frivolous calls... unless donuts were involved.
posted by netbros at 5:46 PM on April 16

It's tough to decide which colour background this post looks best on.
posted by gman at 5:50 PM on April 16

I have had fried chicken's feet. Thankfully, they looked nothing like McNuggets^®.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:54 PM on April 16

Is the theme of this week chicken feet? I was discussing stock-making on Tuesday and mentioned that I was now craving chicken feet, went downtown Wednesday and bought a bag of feet, spread them out on a cookie sheet this afternoon to individually freeze before sticking them in a freezer bag, and now everyone here is talking about chicken feet.

No, I don't have enough for everyone. Get your own damn chicken feet.
posted by maudlin at 6:19 PM on April 16

(Oh, this post is about recommended books from AskMe? That's pretty damn cool, actually.)
posted by maudlin at 6:22 PM on April 16

As a whole, I like the advice in AskMe a lot, but man, that looks like a pretty insufferable chain of books.
posted by ignignokt at 6:30 PM on April 16 [2 favorites]

OK, OK.

I accept now that McNuggets do not look like chicken feet.

From now on I will try to imagine them as BABY feet.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 6:52 PM on April 16

oh wow, they DO look like baby feet...I wonder how I can mention that to my nephews without having my sister in law kill me.
posted by jacalata at 8:23 PM on April 16

I'm married to a SE Asian and have seen more chicken feet than I ever thought I'd see. They remain...articulated...even after cooking. So, a bowl of chicken feet has lots of secondary movement when you shake it. It's rather unsettling but I'm told they are delicious. Believing is better than tasting, I say.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:06 PM on April 16

As children growing up in rural Canada, my mom and her siblings would pass the time by brandishing severed chicken feet and chasing one another around the yard, tugging on the exposed ends of the tendons so as to make the talons contract and unclench in an unholy game of perished and portioned poultry puppetry.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:33 PM on April 16

I think I am responsible for all but one recommendation of "Graphic Artists Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines" ...
posted by krautland at 2:18 AM on April 17

Can't be, krautland, it's one vote per user per book. Though it is an excellent book.
posted by Phire at 2:27 AM on April 17

What you do, is you put the severed end of the chicken foot in your mouth and, while holding it with your teeth, alternately suck as hard as you can and push the tendons out with your tongue, causing the claw to spasmodically clench and unclench.

When your mom asks you what the fuck do you think you are doing, it being Christmas and all, you bite down through the bone, pretend you are chewing 3 pounds of something crunchy, make a show of swallowing and say: "I was waiting for the chicken to suffocate before I chewed it, it's more humane".

The only problem is that the spanking* will mess up the many times rehearsed setup in your underwear and no one will get to see your "farting feathers" routine.

*We could not afford Ritalin, spankings are free and OTC
posted by dirty lies at 3:57 AM on April 17 [17 favorites]

This is a great idea, but I can't help thinking that there have been an awful lot of other book recommendations: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Horror.

I might be willing to cobble a "most recommended" list out of Science Fiction AskMes if given a place to post it. I'll leave the other categories to someone else.
posted by MasonDixon at 6:58 AM on April 17

Dried goose tracheas make fine peashooters.
posted by flabdablet at 6:59 AM on April 17

I'm struggling with the discovery that there are twice as many recommendations for He's Just Not That Into You as for Man's Search for Meaning.

Smaller problems = more frequent discussions, I s'pose.
posted by kittyprecious at 7:08 AM on April 17

He's just not that into meaning.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:33 AM on April 17 [1 favorite]

This is a great idea, but I can't help thinking that there have been an awful lot of other book recommendations

I think the reason philosophistry did this was 1) these are areas he's interested in, and 2, they kinda tie back to his self-help blog. Sadly, I can't see much Sci-Fi being referenced in self help discussions. If you do the work, I'll get off my lazy duff and make my website useful, or at least offer the hosting space.

As a note (which will probably get overlooked), I was trying to figure out how to make the story less directly related to MeFi, but I got lazy. I'm kind of glad this got bumped somewhere beyond Projects, but I don't know how many more folks check MeTa than MePro (is that even the right abbreviation?)
posted by filthy light thief at 10:57 AM on April 17

Filthy,

I've already begun. It won't be as useful as the other philo's list, but there's definitely a few books that get mentioned over and over. I can tell you right now that by my quick scanning Ender's Game and Neal Stephenson seem to be very popular here.

Probably will take a little while to finish. This is a holiday weekend here in Boston.
posted by MasonDixon at 12:17 PM on April 17

"What Color Is Your Parachute?" and "Feeling Good" ??? What are we, Oprah? Ugh.
posted by geoff. at 1:53 PM on April 17

You know, if the batter clung to the webbed area between the digits so that the whole thing was more blob-like.

"webbed"? Are we talking about a different sort of chicken than the, like, normal terrestrial chicken that runs around pecking things and taking awkward flopping dust baths under the porch?
posted by oneirodynia at 2:42 PM on April 17

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and has webbed feet like a duck, it is a Chicken McNugget.
posted by dirty lies at 3:16 PM on April 17 [1 favorite]