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I think there are good ways and bad ways to acknowledge the reader.  Take Jane Eyre for example, she addresses us as "dear reader" but I would not say that Bronte was trying to create some kind of experimental disconnect that makes us question literature as a structure, but rather to draw us in, as though Jane were telling us the story.  Take Edgar Allen Poe or H.P. Lovecraft as well, a lot of their stories begin with something along the lines of, "I am sure you must think I am mad," and address the reader many times.  Granted those books are quite different, but in an abstract sense are a similar structure.  I think the difference is motive for using this particular style.