From the Bookshelf of Reading List 2009…
Find A Copy At
Group Discussions About This Book
No group discussions for this book yet.
What Members Thought
Who is Mary Karr? A memoirist—this is her third. She is now 57 years old. She is a professor of literature at Syracuse University. She is a published poet. She is a single mother. She is famous—given credit for the huge increase in the popularity of the memoir as reader fodder and consequently rich, presumably a 1%er. She is a “free-willing” Catholic and a practicing alcoholic in recovery. In other words – Believes strongly in the power of God & prayers, and sober and attends AA meetings. She is
...more
I have no idea why, but I thought this was going to be a memoir about Mary Karr's relationship with literature. An inevitable mistake for this English major, the same one who drinks from a coffee mug that says, "Lit Happens" to make. But it's not. About literature. Though it is. Sort of. But it's mostly about drinking. About compulsion. About redemption. About back-sliding and coping. It, like The Liar's Club, is a riveting read by simple virtue of the characters who inhabit its pages. But it is
...more
I love the double entendre that is this book's title, Lit. This third memoir from Karr (the first: Liars Club, the second: Cherry) picks up with Mary finally escaping Texas--but not the family alcoholism. With her characteristic unflinchingly honest prose that's nevertheless penned with a poetic beauty, she tells us about her education, the beginnings of her teaching career, her marriage, and becoming a mother, all under the influence of alcohol. She also takes us through what it took for her to
...more
Nov 29, 2009
Julie
marked it as to-read
Apr 30, 2010
Clairebear
added it
