[caption id=attachment_939" align="alignleft" width="236] via Radar Online[/caption]

Warning: Any posts on this book may contain possible triggers for survivors of child abuse.

I normally don't post on our blog, but am taking one for the team with the re-release of the Robert Hoffman book, Kate Gosselin: How She Fooled the World ~ The Rise and Fall of a Reality TV Queen.   For those who have not followed the Gosselin saga and are saying "Kate who?." Robert Hoffman originally released a version of this book a couple years ago and it was on sale at amazon for a whopping 2 days before amazon pulled it due to potential copyright issues.

If you listen to Kate's sheeple, they want you to believe that Kate got the book pulled, but in reality it was actually TLC and possibly some other businesses that filed claims with amazon because there were full contracts published in the book and they considered that proprietary information.   Amazon has a very simple policy.  It is not their job to figure out who owns the copyright, that is the work of lawyers and judges, so if there is a copyright claim filed (and I'm sure it has to look reasonable), they will pull the book.   They make no determination on whether this IS a violation, they just pull the book.   So while Kate's flock likes to make it sound like she personally got the book pulled because it was full of lies, there is no evidence that is the case.  In fact, there is evidence that she tried to keep the book from publication and could not do so.   I'm not going to cover that, google will give you more background than you could ever want about the situation, though, if you are interested.

Mr. Hoffman was originally assigned to follow the Gosselin saga by US Weekly when the situation started melting down in 2009 and continued to follow Kate based on what he saw during his time as a reporter for the magazine.

The book is currently only available as an e-book.  I do not know if they have plans to also publish a dead tree edition or not.  According to amazon, it has approximately 728 pages.  It is split into 42 chapters not including the preface and epilogue.

If you read the first version of the book, you will probably remember that it held a lot of interesting and damning information, but it was a hot mess where editing was concerned.   There was a considerable amount of repetition in the first version and the timeline was fairly hodgepodge.   You can tell that there were editors involved in this new version of the book.  It's a much "easier" read thanks to the editing.  There was still a little repetition and while the timeline started out quite well, I felt like it got a little sloppy and jumped around a fair bit by the midway point in the book.

Another difference between the first version and this version is that rather than having pages and pages of actual contracts, emails and journal entries, there are bullet points and summaries of the information.    This made the book much more reader friendly while still getting the information across.    I had trouble reading the first book in one sitting between the lack of editing and the disturbing material being presented.   This book was a much smoother read and having the material in bullet points and summarized made it easier to digest without internalizing it quite as much.    I'm unsure if a first time reader would feel the same way though.  I had a good idea about what much of the content was going to be like having read the first book already.

Overall, I liked the book and I hope people (meaning people that don't just follow the Gosselin saga) read the book and Kate finally fades away into obscurity where she belongs and her children can have what remains of their childhood away from the cameras in peace.   There were a few things that I felt were a bit of a stretch and probably could (should) have been left out because there is plenty to complain about with Kate, there is no real need to take leaps or make any stretches.   If those things had been left out, perhaps some of the other information Robert had, could have been included.  According to Mr. Hoffman, only about 10% of the material he had made it into the first book.   There was not a lot of new information in this second one and much of it was things that have happened since the publication of the first one, so I trust there was plenty of non-stretchy info that he could have used.

Kate's alleged abortion was disclosed again and that was another area that I felt was perhaps not necessary.  I understand why he put it in both books, given the circumstances of her claiming PCOS and worrying about being able to get pregnant, but if she was forced to have an abortion as a teenager, it's not really something that should be snarked on.    It also doesn't really have anything to do with her ability to become pregnant again.  Many woman suffer from secondary infertility after they became easily pregnant the first time, for example.

From the writing, it comes across that Mr. Hoffman cares for the Gosselin children and the things he has seen and read have bothered him enough to stick to his guns to get this information out there despite the lengths Kate has gone to ruin him and stop the book.    I think it will be good for the kids to know they had someone fighting for them once they are adults, even if no one was really able to help them as children.

Starting (hopefully) tomorrow, I will be doing a chapter by chapter summary of the book for those folks that don't want to actually read the book.

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