On Not Finishing "Lit"

Mary Karr's first memoir, the searing, raw, and devastating story of her childhood with alcoholic parents, "The Liars' Club" (Viking, 1995), is considered by many to have precipitated the flood of memoirs since then. After "Liars' Club," Karr published another memoir, "Cherry" (Viking, 2000), and now her third memoir "Lit" (Harper, 2009) has appeared. I resisted "Liars' Club" for quite a while, but finally read it at the urging of several friends, and was glad I did. I skipped "Cherry," but good reviews of "Lit" led me to check it out of the library and begin reading. I acknowledge that Karr is a gifted writer, and that her sad, defiant, honest, courageous, and even sometimes funny story is often compelling. But the book also started to feel repetitive and dreary, and although I suppose that is part of the point of a memoir that focuses on alcoholism (this time hers) and its sometimes horrific consequences, I just didn't feel like trudging any further into the story. So I didn't. I stopped reading at page 175, just under halfway through the book. In the past ten years or so, I have increasingly given myself permission to stop reading books that I am not enjoying or am tired of reading or just don't feel like reading more of. I didn't expect "Lit" to be one of those books, but there it is.