Great Reads for December
Story of a road
My grandparents lived across from a quarry. It was aboveground—not one of those deep swimming-hole quarries—and it’s where workers pulled out sandstone for the churches and bridges of the Ohio Valley in the 1800s and early 1900s. By the time we moved in, it had shut down, leaving behind a sheer cliff of rock overgrown with junk trees and pines.
To me, though, it was a jungle, an escape, a slice of nature that, to this day, remains untouched by the cozy houses of Martins Ferry—the small homes that Hungarian and Polish soldiers, like the Snezeks, the Vargos, the Siecinskis, and the Nagys, bought after World War II with their steelworker salaries.
Over the summer, the quarry was lush and dense, filled with rocks to climb and carve—perfect for playing war, recreating Indiana Jones, or sneaking around like a ninja. By fall—around Thanksgiving, when we visited from Columbus—the trees turned vibrant shades of orange and red. By Christmas, the bare branches revealed the golden stone beneath.
That’s when the quarry became magical. It transformed into Narnia, a frozen Oz, an alien landscape. I’d walk up there—it couldn’t have been much bigger than a few blocks—and wander for hours along paths that neighborhood kids had carved over the decades, through culverts, cuts, and cracks in the old rock. It was an escape from the heat of my grandmother’s house—the cooking, the television blaring in the kitchen, and the drinks my grandfather and father exchanged. The quarry was cold and quiet. The dog and I would wander for hours.
Because it was Christmas, I expected magic. I’d turn a corner, hoping to see a mountain lion. I’d look up, imagining a dragon. I’d peer down, searching for a lost dagger or a wand abandoned by an absentminded magician.
But those things never happened. The magic came later at night, under the twinkling tree, beside the ceramic houses my grandmother displayed every year, and the nativity scene that framed the best week of my life.
I’d sit by the big window in my grandmother’s house and look toward the quarry, at the thin trees scraping the sky and the snow falling steadily. Winters were colder then, a cold that settled in and froze your nose. Inside, though, it was steamy and warm. The scent of my grandmother’s house was as familiar and necessary as her hug. I’d gaze out into the dark, watching the path up to the quarry. Who would climb it tonight? Who would come down?
In the darkness, I imagined something fantastic, something wonderful, something amazing. Maybe it would be a deer, faintly glowing in the moonlight, or a character from a book I was reading. Maybe it was me—a new me, a different me—coming down to wave goodnight.
I never saw these things, but I swear I did. On those cold Christmas nights, I waited for the future to unfold, for the old to fall away, and for the path to the quarry to become a road leading far, far away to a better place.
Merry Christmas.
And now on to the books.
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Star 111
Lutz Seiler
This is a fascinating book. Set in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the story is about a strait-laced East German man who falls in with a communal squat in a group of old buildings in Berlin. A tale of upheaval, transition, and rebirth, it’s a look inside of a Europe that seems long gone yet strangely still real.
Health and Safety: A Breakdown
Emily Witt
If you want to be simultaneously annoyed and entertained, please read this bildungsroman by Emily Witt. Ostensibly about techno, it’s actually about a woman who slowly relaxed and became less annoying. It’s very well written and a great, quick read.
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream
Jay Stevens
I’m writing a book about mushrooms this year so I’m going through a lot of books about the rise and fall of psychedelics in America. This one was particularly well-written and very interesting, coming from a more straightforward view of the entire hippie-to-yuppie pipeline that LSD and psilocybin have taken. It’s hard to find but good if you can grab it.