Chagrin | Pivotal Reads

A sixth-grade vocabulary assignment and a reading circle twenty years in the making.

»To my chagrin I waited and waited. —Bette Davis, This ‘N That

The first memoir I remember noticing at all was probably Bette Davis’s This ‘N That. I remember it most clearly because of a sixth-grade vocabulary assignment. Each week, we had to bring in a word we'd encountered in our everyday reading or listening that we didn't know. I didn’t have one yet that week — so I flipped open my grandmother’s mass market paperback copy of Bette’s book and scanned until I saw an unfamiliar word.

I was very familiar with Bette Davis already for a sixth grader…and for the pre-TCM days of darkness. (I remember when AMC used to live up to that initialism — which stood for “American Movie Classics” — and actually showed old movies.) And I remember wondering whether I was interested in reading the book. But I found the word I was desperately searching for. And thank goodness this was in an otherwise innocuous sentence, because I had to share the context too.

The word was chagrin.

chagrin • noun

: a feeling of being frustrated or annoyed because of failure or disappointment

Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “chagrin,” accessed June 11, 2026, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chagrin.

Incidentally, one of the other words I distinctly recall learning one day is in fourth grade and the word cahoots. But I digress.

Ever since that favor Bette Davis did me for this questionably impactful assignment, I've held onto that word, tucked away alongside the memory.

Then, in the blink of an eye, twenty years have passed … and I’d love to say that began my adoration and complete immersion in all things memoir, but that’s just not the truth. Surprisingly, I don't think I read my first memoir until I was about 30, when I picked up 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff and fell in love. I still think about that slim book — one that is only half memoir and far more epistolary than anything.

I don’t recall what made me grab that one — I honestly feel like I just spotted it on a special shelf in the library and liked the address in the title, but that one did open the door to memoir, literary nonfiction, letters, and narrative nonfiction. Now I definitely need hits of nonfiction sprinkled throughout each year or I’ll notice and miss its absence.

Later, in 2015, I went back to This ‘N That for a full-circle moment. I bought a used hardcover for myself and finally read the book that had supplied my sixth-grade vocabulary homework all those years earlier. I didn't fall head over heels for the book, but that's almost beside the point. What I love is that I eventually made it all the way back to the beginning—to sixth-grade me, my grandmother's mass market paperback, and a forever word: chagrin.

Happy reading!

–C.

What are some pivotal reads that hit your life?

P.S. On a side note, or a post script, as it were — as I thumbed through my 1987 hardcover of Bette’s book, I took a moment to marvel at the thickness of the pages. The changes in this industry over the years is definitely noticeable when you bump into a high-quality oldie.