52 Books in 52 Weeks - Week 10 - Parched

I've had Parched by Heather King on my bookshelf for a few weeks now, and this week I'm going to start reading it as part of the 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge I'm doing.  Today I plan to finish reading the eight book of the challenge, I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali and Delphine Minoui, which is a powerful book and worth reading.

The next book that I selected is another autobiography.  Parched is about one woman's journey to the bottom of the bottle and back again. I took a quick peek into the book this morning and read some parts.  It looks like it will be a rather moving and candid look at alcoholism and its effects.

Heather King is a lawyer and National Public Radio writer and commentator who describes her twenty-year-long descent into the depths of addiction in Parched.  She went from a highly-functioning alcoholic who managed to maintain her grip on reality to living in bars, drinking around the clock, and barely sustaining an existence.

With help from an unexpected source, King stopped her self-destructive spiral and changed her world for the better. From what I have read in various reviews about this book, it is a poignant, painfully honest, and inspirational true story of a woman who looked into the abyss, and was able to step back from the edge and reclaim her life on her own terms.

After my own ten years of drinking and now almost 20 years of sobriety (October 2011 will mark 20 years), I am particularly interested in reading this book.

Before beginning reading Parched, I wanted to learn a bit more about Heather King, so I looked her up on the internet.  After reading her bio, I went to her blog.  As I scrolled down the blog, I came across a posting she wrote about her mother who has Alzheimer's Disease.  It was interesting to read the dialogue she had with her mother, because it - in some ways - reminds me of the conversations I have with my dad who also has Alzheimer's Disease. 

I'm looking forward to reading this book...even more so now that I know a bit more about the author and how her life has unfolded during her years of sobriety.

Note on March 19th:  I finished reading the book and was disappointed with it.  The majority of it (all but the last chapter and epilogue) focus on drinking.  I found myself skimming through some of the chapters because I simply wasn't interested in hearing about being drunk. 

I was hoping that a greater percentage of the book would have been about her recovery and life of sobriety.  To me, this would have been a much more inspiring book to read.