memoir: the easiest solution to ms. bloat: apologize?!

Is it horrifying for an author to point out "As a reader, you can skip
whatever you want"? (Isn't it the author's responsibility to not write
text that people will want to skip?)

Maybe it's not? Math books have an established convention for this!
(Putting a star next to the sections or exercises that someone might
want to skip on a first reading.)

Is it horrifying that this "patch" for a bloated ms. involves adding
more wordcount? That's more likely. We'll see if we can cut enough to
make up for it.