Lowbrow

If you like weird Victorian ephemera and creepy stuff like I do, then you should check out Madame Talbot's. There're tons of goodies to look at. Highlights include "Vagina Wafers" and assorted embalming and apothecary bottles from the late 19th century. Also of note is the "Black Remover," which makes everything "White."

On other fronts, I just ate up a fun little novel by Poppy Z. Brite, called Liquor , which is aptly named because two chefs (who are also a male life partners, and who have been line cooks and poor their whole lives) in New Orleans open their own restaurant wherein every recipe has some form of liquor in it. It's a quick read (it took me 2 days) and is nothing fancy, but it totally held my attention, so much so that I have already queued up the next book in the series at the library! It got me thinking, of course, about Katrina's aftermath, and I wonder how the series will shift between books 3 and 4 in the series, pre- and post-Katrina. How can her narrative ever be the same after it? So, I also picked up Billy Sothern's Down in New Orleans: Reflections from A Drowned City, which I will grant its own review post in the very near future, once I am finished with it (and while I wait Prime, Brite's second novel in the series). I also am waiting for Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke to come in from Netflix late this week. I truly am a glutton for punishment, so do expect a rambling post about Katrina and the (non)efforts to rebuild N.O.