Misery memoirs

I was in a bookshop at the weekend and was horrified to spot a whole bay of books labelled "Tragic Life Stories". Who on earth would make a bee-line for this section? Catharsis is one thing, but surely this is verging on voyeurism. Of course you might find one of these books interesting and might even want to bear witness to the author's suffering by reading it. It's the fact that there seems to be a whole industry based on people's harrowing childhood experiences that is disturbing.