That time I almost blew my lips off...

And Book Report, Part II: what my reading list says about this year

Before we begin…

Tell us one of the memories or stories you trot out every year around this time, even if you’re the only one remembering. Or, if that’s too ouchy, tell us about the books you read this year and what, if anything, they told you about yourself or the kind of year you’ve had.

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First, a little holiday memory

One December long ago, when my son was four, I was twenty-two, and his godmother, Lisa, was our roommate, we went food shopping. Both Lisa and I worked at the same newspaper and made the same pittance of a salary but the holidays were almost upon us and we felt festive.

Source: https://cooking-the-world.com/german-roasted-chestnuts/

As we pushed the cart into the produce aisle we noticed a display of chestnuts, all packaged and ready to be roasted. They weren’t cheap. But they instantly brought back a December from my childhood when my dad and I were walking in Manhattan and came upon a man selling roasted chestnuts. We shared a bag of them as we walked and looked into the windows of all the big stores decorated for Christmas. This kind of moment with my father was as rare as the experience of eating those chestnuts. Lisa wasn’t convinced but she didn’t object so into the cart went the raw chestnuts and as soon as we got home, with no information (Google wasn’t invented yet and neither of us owned a cookbook) we arrayed them on a cookie sheet and popped them into the oven.

It was dinner time and I had to go cover a school board meeting after we ate so the three of us dined while the chestnuts roasted. I hoped they’d be done before I had to leave. I couldn’t wait to try those smoky, sweet, chewy nuts. Then we heard a sound, a kind of popping but deeper, like a popcorn popper with a baritone. Then another. Then another.

My son’s eyes widened appreciatively. Dinner didn’t usually come with entertainment. It dawned on Lisa and me that the chestnuts were exploding. We ran to the oven, pulled them out and set them on top of the stove. Like this:

Lisa remarked that maybe we should have pierced the skins before putting them in which, of course, made all kinds of sense. I knew to do this with potatoes but it had never occurred to me that chestnuts would require the same special handling. Did I mention I was only twenty-two and my judgment was as underdeveloped as my ability to cook?

No matter, once the chestnuts were on top of the stove, they looked exactly as I remembered and they seemed to be resting quietly. I picked one up. I lifted it to my mouth. I bit down.

The chestnut detonated the instant my teeth pierced its surface. I can still remember how my seared lips and mouth swelled so fast I thought my own skin would split. Tears ran from my eyes uncontrollably. My son – his eyes now wide with concern – asked what was wrong with mommy. Lisa ran for ice. I ran for the kitchen sink and stuck my head under the faucet hoping somehow that the stream of cold water would put out the fire on my face.

A half-hour later, still weeping, still clutching a baggie full of ice cubes, I got into my car to go cover the meeting. The members of the school board turned to acknowledge my arrival and went silent. Polite New Englanders, they would not ask me straight out to explain. I tried to mumble something about a “kitchen accident.” My lips were so thick and swollen I could not enunciate. A throbbing red stain spread from my nose to my chin. They glanced at each other skeptically and then back at me many times as they opened the meeting. I remember one man so transfixed by whatever he saw on my face that he missed his turn to speak.

I lasted twenty minutes and then my boss, alerted by Lisa, showed up. He told me to go home, he would cover the meeting. Later, he told me that the school board members had thought I was the victim of horrible abuse. He also admitted that when they learned the truth, they laughed with a mix of incredulity and sympathy. They were kind but I never heard the last of it – every time I arrived at a school board meeting, one member in particular would ask me if I’d roasted any chestnuts lately.

This week, in Trader Joe’s, I found a cute little package of steamed, already peeled chestnuts. I bought them. I’ve nibbled on them over the past few days. They are not at all the same, of course. But nothing ever is. Sometimes that’s good.

What food do you most associate with this time of year and where, if at all, do chestnuts fit in?

Now, Book Report, Part II

Last week, I reported on the book I am writing. This week I revert to what has become an annual look back at the books I’ve read over the past year and see what the list tells me about me or my life during the past year. I look at my choices the way my grandmother used to peer at the tea leaves in the bottom of the pink lustre teacups she used whenever I visited her. I have those teacups now. I wish I had her. I think she would look at the books I’ve read in 2025 and have questions:

• Why are seven of the books I read in 2025 books I’ve read before, sometimes more than once?

• Why are five of the books in Italian, and another five nonfiction?

• Why is the list so much shorter than it’s been in years?

You can see the whole list here: Books Read 2025. You will find the following:

• Rereads: 7

• Memoir: 1

• Nonfiction: 5

• Advance Review Copies: 3

• Short Story collections: 4

• Italian (not translations): 4 (2 finished, 2 in progress)

• Italian/English Parallel Text: 1

• One middle-grade (in Italian)

If this list is accurate, I will have only read 25 books in 2025. Three of them are still in progress and I’m not sure I’ll manage all of them before the end of the year. The list continues a declining trend since 2023 when I read 51 books, followed by 35 in 2024. Before 2023, I was averaging 53 books a year. I don’t know what to make of it. It seemed to me there were more. I confess to some embarrassment – I am a bookish person writing a bookish newsletter. Books have not only been my longtime love, they feed my writing. In the absence of an M.F.A, they have formed the core of my education as a writer.

I have been unsettled by the thought that keeps occurring to me lately. Is there a point at which reading ceases to hold the magic it always has? Is this even possible?

When I look more deeply at this list, though, as well as the year that has just passed, I see some reassuring signs:

This year, as with last year, I wrote more and read less. (See Book Report, Part I from last week).

• Each of them were books I wanted or needed to read at the moment I picked them up. I’ve learned not to question this. The rereads acted as familiar voices that matched a specific need whether it was in my soul or in my writing. Five of those Sally Vickers’ Miss Garnet’s Angel, for example, took me on an unexpected journey back to Venice but also to the first time I read it and didn’t quite grasp the heart of the story. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, written in her spare but powerful prose, made me cry when I needed to. Both stories showed me solitary women who grappled with connection, loss, love, and aging. Writing about both of these led to Sipsworth by which was suggested by a Spark reader who lives close by and stopped on her walk to tell me about it.

• Jincy Willet (Amy Falls Down, Jenny and the Jaws of Life) called my name from the shelves when I needed to laugh but I found in those pages women I related to immediately along with insights that went straight to my core. The novels by Anne Tyler (Back When We Were Grownups) and Elizabeth Strout (her debut, Amy and Isabelle) explored cobbled-together families and mother-daughter relationships while showing me how their own writing has evolved over the years.

• When it came to nonfiction, I seemed to be seeking inspiration for the current moment in our world Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes ( by Sunita Sah, We All Want to Change the World by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and books that addressed two ongoing themes for me: mastering my memory and keeping my brain function (Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer) and how to think about what is important and what isn’t when it comes to work and life when trying to get things done.” (Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks To Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman).

• The novels that came to me from publishers and authors before they were published were joys to discover – and that sense of discovery is powerful. They reminded me all over again how much I hope and want to put a story out there in the world, come what may. I wrote about each of them: Leverage by Amran Gowani, A Complete Fiction by R.L. Maizes, and Sex of the Midwest by Robyn Ryle.

Finally, those books in Italian require a lot of time and that, it turns out, is one of their biggest gifts to me. I must read slowly. I often read a page or a chapter more than once. I cannot read without a dictionary or my phone nearby to help with translations. Yet the payoff, a new word or the thrill of realizing I grasped more than I thought I had. Or recognized not just words but tone, voice, sensibility of the writers and the characters they’d put on the page.

When I read even the simplest child’s story in Italian, I am no longer in the here and now. Every part of my brain is engaged. The moment of understanding or realizing yet another way to express a thought, an object, wakes up the kid in me who discovered reading for the first time back when I was five. I couldn’t rush through books then as I learned to do later. Now, reading slowly in Italian has led me to questions I’ve never asked myself. What is the rush? Are there discoveries I’ve missed by reaching for one book after another without taking time in between to absorb, think?

For what it is worth, I have pledged to finish each of the books that are written in Italian on this list before I move on to my next book. There is something in me that wants to savor rather than rush, to absorb the language, yes, but also to feel like a child opening up to a new world full of words.

Tell me about the books you read or chose not to read in 2025. What, if anything, did your list tell you about yourself or the year you’ve had?

Thank you and see you next year!

This is the final issue of Spark for the year although I’ll be checking in and responding to comments and posting here and there – our conversation is important to me and I am so grateful for your support and for the insight you have shared with each of us when you comment. If an idea occurs to you during our holiday hiatus, do NOT hesitate to fire away. Email me an idea, a book, a moment of Zen. This project is richer because of your contributions.

See you again on January 10.

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Gratefully yours,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…do NOT ask me to pose for another Christmas photo…

Or this is what you’ll get…

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”:

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.

I can’t wait to see what you send!

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