I think if you want to use the curse, taking Additional Lore frequently is a good thing to do, if you can reliably roll vs a lower dc then it starts to become more worth it.
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In general, you should ignore the oracle entirely. You should also never bother with recall knowledge unless you have a gm that makes it work, because the base rules for it are miserable.
Now assuming you want to play an oracle anyway and you know that you'll actually get something useful out of recall knowledge you still shouldn't use lore's curse because the free checks basically use assurance which is worthless against equal or higher level targets or those with a rarity tag, assuming you even have the right skill or lore skill boosted to begin with. Oh and each attempt at recall knowledge boosts the DC of subsequent checks so even beyond having little to no chance of success the first time, you have absolutely none for subsequent checks.
The only real use for lore oracle is having the best stuff to steal with repeated uses of divine access.
Oracle can be useful just for the Mystery Benefit, and the improved recovery of focus spells at not feat cost. Without actually ever activating the curse. As in go and get yourself some non Oracle Focus spells.
It does seem like a bit of a waste though.
To my mind the minor curse for Lore Oracle is very harsh. You can't get rid of the minor curse till the end of the day. Perhaps with Ancestor it is the most challenging to use. One of two Mysteries I'd be tempted to almost never activate.
But other people seem to disagree. They don't mind an 50% extra chance of losing initiative. I've always got a buff to cast or an actual offensive action.
The other Mysteries are all fine though. You can reasonably build around the disadvantages and mostly cope OK with them.
I love the flavor of Lore Oracle. I haven't had the opportunity to actually play one. And looking through the mechanics, I'm not entirely certain about it either.
The extra spells known is awesome. Maybe a bit too much considering how that causes the balance of the rest of the Mystery and Curse to be.
Brain Drain is usable, I guess. 2 actions, basic will save, 1d8 per level damage. Not sure what I would use the enemy's skill ranks for - does the GM even have skill stats for random enemies?
-4 to initiative is not terrible in my opinion. Not going first in combat happens often enough that you should have a plan for how to handle that anyway.
The permanent flat-footed would be a bit frightening a lot of the time. Even more so against some types of enemies.
The free action Recall Knowledge sounds good - especially when paired with Access Lore that can get you to that Curse stage as well as give you a specific Lore tailored exactly to the enemies currently being battled. But it is highly dependent on how the GM runs Recall Knowledge and how much succeeding at that check actually benefits anyone. Also, as was mentioned before, you don't get to actually roll the check - so it isn't going to work well for higher level enemies. And if it does work, you will eventually run out of information to get. But hopefully the battle will be over before that happens.
And then Major Curse undoes all of that last paragraph. You might get the knowledge, but you can't share it with the people who could actually use it. You also end up losing a quarter of the spells that you try to cast. (approximately - you don't risk that for the few spells that don't have verbal components) Considering that pretty much all of the other Oracle Curse Major curse levels are either straight up good (Battle, Cosmos) or double sided (Flames, Life) having one that is nothing but downsides feels a bit harsh.