October reading
Several years ago I wrote that the world could stop manufacturing Christmas-themed stuff and it would be years before we noticed. We're almost at that point with Halloween stuff, and I didn't even set foot in a Spirit Halloween.
Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded-Age New York, Marge Piercy
To be honest, this was a little disappointing. My favorite Piercy novel is Gone to Soldiers, but I would've been happy if it had been as good as City of Darkness, City of Light. It had a lot of potential, featuring Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Victoria Woodhull in narratives along with a Russian Jewish immigrant making her way after her husband dies in an accident shortly after they arrived and a sympathetic villain in Anthony Comstock. As a lot of Goodreads reviewers point out, the book feels more like a chance for Piercy to lecture about women's rights than a fully fledged story about women finding different paths to fulfillment. Characters only appear in three dimensions briefly. I guess that I did finish it, mostly to see whether it ever got better. [Also, it didn't take very long.]
Nairobi Heat, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ
I enjoyed this short, fast-paced detective/crime novel. The body of a young blonde woman is found on the front porch of a visiting Rwandan professor in Madison, Wisconsin. The flawed, tortured hero is a Black cop who receives an anonymous tip that the solution to the crime is in Nairobi. In the first of many implausible plot twists, the Madison police department actually sends him to Nairobi for two weeks, where he is partnered with a Nairobi cop. There are movie-ready action scenes, despicable and eccentric rich people living on secluded estates outside of town, and, of course, a long-legged dame. There's a little bit of musing about race, Africans, and African Americans, but that's not the reason to read the book. I see that there's a sequel that I'll look for, but I don't think there's a series. Alas.
A Short History of African Art, Werner Gillon
This is the book that took up most of my month. It is short, considering it covers everything from the earliest humans to roughly 1970 (it was originally published in 1985), but it is also extremely dense. Gillon starts with lamenting the lack of research (and funding for research) then describes some of the most ancient art (rock drawings). After that, he covers various regions, starting near Lake Chad and going west, then following the Atlantic coastline down to South Africa and back up the Indian Ocean coast to Nubia. It was a good complement to the four-session Smithsonian Associates class, with some overlap but a lot of new information. One thing that definitely feels stale is Gillon's description of Europeans in the 15th through 19th century "collecting" African art. He refers to the destruction of the city of Benin and the subsequent looting as "an intense military campaign," so it was a bit of surprise when he actually describes Cecil Rhodes' pillaging of Greater Zimbabwe as "looting." One of the strong points of the book is plentiful photographs of really astonishing, beautiful works. Also, Gillon mentioned a Black American missionary who acquired a sizeable collection of art and donated it to Hampton University. A possible weekend trip!