Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  Been a bit of a weird week here at the Finn household, but not terrible things and I hope everything is going well for you.  So let's get to this week's book-heavy finds.

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Parnassus On Wheels is a fantastic 1917 book set at a time when you could still drive a covered, horse-drawn wagon around and make a living selling books out in the sticks.  In this sequel Helen and Roger Miflin have left the road and opened their store and of course, this being a book store, murder occurs.  I do love a good bibliomystery like this and somehow I've never owned a copy of this book, which I've read a few times,

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I came to David Mitchell a little late, but since then I've become a huge fan.  Cloud Atlas is amazing and became one of the best movies of its year, The Bone Clocks is a wonderfully weird novel about a Bad Place house and this, Slade House, is apparently a companion novel to it.  So this is definitely one I'm going to prioritize in the next few weeks.

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Roger Ebert was the epitome of a film critic who I didn't always agree with but I always respected his viewpoint. For instance, flipping through this, I think he's just plain wrong on Patton (which I find far too long and not especially interesting in a way that the movie doesn't justify).  But he explains his viewpoint and his appreciation for the movie so beautifully that I just cannot help but admire his use of language and how he loved film just so, so much.  Somehow before I only had the third in this series of books and I should just buy the first one.  (Also, flipping through, I really need to watch Amadeus again.)

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Ebert was a huge fan of Alien, one of the best horror movies of the last 40 years, and I almost don't want to see what his review of this was.  I have no chill when it comes to any of the Alien movies, which I generally love.  Well, except for the absolutely dreadful Alien Vs Predator: Requiem (which is, I swear to goodness, styled as AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem, which makes me unreasonably angry).  But this is the end of the line, at this point, for Sigourney Weaver in this series.  Weaver is the center of this series, the uber woman action hero in many ways, and one of the rare science fiction actors to have an Oscar nomination for their work,  I will maintain her work in this last movie is pretty damn excellent as she struggles with being revived from her death in Alien 3, a revival that because of how she died means she has alien DNA in her that has given her certain gifts.

(It's worth noting that they were quite willing to fake that final shot but Weaver somehow made it.)

It's a really, really good Weaver performance here as she navigates being human but infected by her greatest enemy,  Absolutely worth checking out if you've never seen it or stopped after the bad reception of Alien 3 (which I quite like but I know I'm in the minority).

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I've never featured this one, since the cover is isn't that interesting, but where I bought it is the important part.  This is Weird Stories by Mrs. J. H. Riddell (real name: Charlotte Riddell), a collection of ghost stores that originally came out in 1882. This is a 1946 edition from London publisher Home and Van Thal and I love this sort of little find.  I bought this at Black Swan Books in Richmond, VA...and now it looks like I might be moving there for family.  So this is the book I'll be reading on the long car ride there.

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This week's recommendation is to hop on Hulu and watch Cruel Summer.  I finally finished it and this is the great summer schlock you need right now, a show about betrayal and kidnapping and so, SO many appropriate CW warnings.  Seriously, check this out.  One of the big surprises here is Harley Quinn Smith, daughter of director Kevin Smith, who knows exactly what she's doing as the one person who bounces among the various friends and family factions.  Totally a performance you should see.