About book If I Did It: Confessions Of The Killer (2007)
Reposted with permission from BirdBrianif you see the hydra, repost with the hydra on topCensorship sucks, AND it often doesn't even workLet's get this part out of the way first: I thought the book was poorly written. I thought the grammar was at times awkward, and some of the things said were illogical. I found spelling errors on pages 4, 92, and 9024."If I Did It". Kinda clever what he did there, isn't it? The whole premise of the book is a hypothetical, so it isn't really an admission of wrongdoing- even though it describes step by step exactly how O.J. would have committed the crime he was accused of... you know, "if" he did it.Like most people in America, I followed this trial with interest, and I feel confident based on what I learned that O.J. Simpson is guilty of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman's murders.My understanding is that O.J. wrote this book to get money to help pay his legal bills from the trial, although most of the money now goes to the Goldman family, because they won a civil case against him. So as I see it, this book was written to help a murderer- who eluded justice- to further profit from his crime ("further" beyond whatever murderous bloodlust of the moment it satisfied.)That makes me really dispise this author's behavior.But of course we all know that I can't just come out and trash the book based on how I feel about the author's behavior. That would violate GoodReads' Terms of Service.Of course If I didn't read the book, and I posted a 1 star review of it anyhow, I'm not entirely sure how GoodReads would know this. And If I wanted to write an excoriating review that appeared to be "about the book", I could skim the brief description on the book's page for a few central points and themes, couldn't I? I could find a few names to drop, and probably cobble together a review that sounded like I had read the book. (If I didn't read the book, but of course I totally did.)Naturally, I'd have to keep the review "about the book". I'd have to say the writing was bad, things didn't make sense, it was boring, etc, etc. But it would be easy enough to do, If I felt strongly enough about it.So what's my point?My point is that back in the GoodReads "Before Censorship Era" (BCE), I could have written a nasty review about the author, and put it on a shelf called "authors who profit from murder". I could have openly admitted that I never read the book, and readers could take that into consideration when they read my review. GoodReaders would see my honest opinions for what they are, and they could make their own mind up about whether my thoughts on the author are justified, and whether they agree, and whether they should avoid the book. Reviews from the BCE were more likely to be open and honest, even if they were exceedingly negative.Now we are in the Censorship Era (CE). If I feel strongly about a book based on its author, there's no way of stopping me from writing a terrible review about it; I just have to keep some rules in mind, to escape detection. With 20 million users on the site, it seems unlikely that GR could realistically track down and identify all the reviews which appear to be about the book, but which are really driven by other motives. Not going to happen. It is an ironclad certainty that reviews like that WILL be posted in the future, and they WILL escape official detection.The thing is, with all of the honesty of the BCE lost, how is anybody to know which reviews are reliable, and which ones are effectively wolves in sheeps' clothing? GoodReads' new policies (or old policies with new implementation practices) doesn't eradicate "because-of-the-author" reviews; it merely drives them underground. And in doing so, it makes ALL reviews suspect.The GoodReads of BCE had some nasty author-reader blowups, but for the most part the reviews everybody had such bad feelings about were easy to identify, and they didn't call the integrity of other reviews into question. In the GoodReads of the CE, EVERY review is suspect. You can't tell which is honest and which is an imposter.It cheapens the value of reviews and thus of the site. While GoodReads/Amazon doesn't care about the free expression of ideas, or building a community of readers, you can bet they care about the value of the site, because that affects revenue.So what has GoodReads achieved by censoring reviewers? It appears they have reduced the value of their own product (i.e. their precious "author packages"), and they have not prevented even a single reviewer from posting negative, because-of-the-author reviews, including of books the reviewer hasn't read.As I stated in the caption to the image at the top of this review: not only does censorship suck, but it often doesn't even work.
Censorship sucks, AND it often doesn't even workLet's get this part out of the way first: I thought the book was poorly written. I thought the grammar was at times awkward, and some of the things said were illogical. I found spelling errors on pages 4, 92, and 9024."If I Did It". Kinda clever what he did there, isn't it? The whole premise of the book is a hypothetical, so it isn't really an admission of wrongdoing- even though it describes step by step exactly how O.J. would have committed the crime he was accused of... you know, "if" he did it. Like most people in America, I followed this trial with interest, and I feel confident based on what I learned that O.J. Simpson is guilty of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman's murders. My understanding is that O.J. wrote this book to get money to help pay his legal bills from the trial, although most of the money now goes to the Goldman family, because they won a civil case against him. So as I see it, this book was written to help a murderer- who eluded justice- to further profit from his crime ("further" beyond whatever murderous bloodlust of the moment it satisfied.)That makes me really dispise this author's behavior. But of course we all know that I can't just come out and trash the book based on how I feel about the author's behavior. That would violate GoodReads' Terms of Service.Of course If I didn't read the book, and I posted a 1 star review of it anyhow, I'm not entirely sure how GoodReads would know this. And If I wanted to write an excoriating review that appeared to be "about the book", I could skim the brief description on the book's page for a few central points and themes, couldn't I? I could find a few names to drop, and probably cobble together a review that sounded like I had read the book. (If I didn't read the book, but of course I totally did.)Naturally, I'd have to keep the review "about the book". I'd have to say the writing was bad, things didn't make sense, it was boring, etc, etc. But it would be easy enough to do, If I felt strongly enough about it.So what's my point?My point is that back in the GoodReads "Before Censorship Era" (BCE), I could have written a nasty review about the author, and put it on a shelf called "authors who profit from murder". I could have openly admitted that I never read the book, and readers could take that into consideration when they read my review. GoodReaders would see my honest opinions for what they are, and they could make their own mind up about whether my thoughts on the author are justified, and whether they agree, and whether they should avoid the book. Reviews from the BCE were more likely to be open and honest, even if they were exceedingly negative.Now we are in the Censorship Era (CE). If I feel strongly about a book based on its author, there's no way of stopping me from writing a terrible review about it; I just have to keep some rules in mind, to escape detection. With 20 million users on the site, it seems unlikely that GR could realistically track down and identify all the reviews which appear to be about the book, but which are really driven by other motives. Not going to happen. It is an ironclad certainty that reviews like that WILL be posted in the future, and they WILL escape official detection. The thing is, with all of the honesty of the BCE lost, how is anybody to know which reviews are reliable, and which ones are effectively wolves in sheeps' clothing? GoodReads' new policies (or old policies with new implementation practices) doesn't eradicate "because-of-the-author" reviews; it merely drives them underground. And in doing so, it makes ALL reviews suspect. The GoodReads of BCE had some nasty author-reader blowups, but for the most part the reviews everybody had such bad feelings about were easy to identify, and they didn't call the integrity of other reviews into question. In the GoodReads of the CE, EVERY review is suspect. You can't tell which is honest and which is an imposter. It cheapens the value of reviews and thus of the site. While GoodReads/Amazon doesn't care about the free expression of ideas, or building a community of readers, you can bet they care about the value of the site, because that affects revenue.So what has GoodReads achieved by censoring reviewers? It appears they have reduced the value of their own product (i.e. their precious "author packages"), and they have not prevented even a single reviewer from posting negative, because-of-the-author reviews, including of books the reviewer hasn't read.As I stated in the caption to the image at the top of this review: not only does censorship suck, but it often doesn't even work. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Do You like book If I Did It: Confessions Of The Killer (2007)?
Honestly pretty mind blowing. There appears to be no good reason why Simpson would write "a fictional account" of how he killed his wife. But the fact that he did makes it very interesting. Especially since it's surrounded by supposedly "true" parts of the story. Ultimately it has some very revealing parts that make you wonder how Simpson can continue to claim innocence. There's also an accomplice in his "fictional" account which fits pretty well with a lot of the facts as they were revealed in the case a decade later. Simpson comes across arrogant and he loves to place blame on others. Claiming he's a "battered boyfriend" and Nicole is a drug crazed psycho. The whole book comes across as spooky and a definite confession. Pretty compelling read.
—Angus McKeogh
Uhm, wow, where to start, what to say? Maybe like this, with the pure technical side: the writing style is good, it's an easy read with a good flow, so, kudos to ghostwriter Pablo F. Fenjves (who also added a very intersting foreword; actually, all the extra texts surrounding O.J.'s "actual report" are interesting, since they offer a lot of what was going on behind the scenes of this book's genesis).That being said, if you're interested in the general topic - the O.J. murder case and/or true crime in general, if you remember what went on back then, the abuse, the murder, the trial - this might be a book for you. I say might because on the one hand, this is completely disturbing and appalling - at the same time, it's weirdly fascinating, in a "shake your head and bang it against the wall because the author really claims this as his truth"-kind of way. I'm still not sure if I feel made fun of as reader or am just confused because O.J. really thought anybody would swallow all of this...?I'm not the one to judge characters of people I don't know. However: even if I came from the moon, had never heard of O.J. and Nicole and Ron before and read this book, I'd knew this makes little to no sense. Painting a picture of oneself as some holy martyr only to then speculate how said person would commit a brutal double murder - hypothetically speaking? WTF?? Why would an innocent person (who - if we continue this fairy tale - lost his divorced yet still beloved wife, was wrongfully judged by literally everybody and their sister, was wrongfully put on trial and narrowly escaped the death penalty) tell suich a tale? WHAT? The mind, it boggles and just doesn't stop. A weird book this is. An okay read, fascinating in a strange, almost pervert way, but mainly weird.
—Lennongirl
This book was so revolting that I stopped reading it after about the first 40 pages. OJ continued to assert that he was better than Nicole, and that after they had gotten divorced, she begged to get him back even though he was dating Paula what's-her-name, and that she wouldn't stop phoning him and trying to win him back. It was disgusting. The prologue, written by the Goldman family, was equally foul. They wrote of their desire for vengeance, and while I understand that, seeing that OJ obviously murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, give it a rest. They just talked about how much money they stood to get from the proceeds of the book and the trials they kept going through and winning against OJ, and after 10 years, the $19 million that they had won had now turned into $38 million and they were angry that he hadn't paid them. I would be angry, too, but I'm not writing a book about it and telling everyone that I stand to get $38 million.There was also a prologue written by the ghostwriter, who had met with OJ to get all of the details of the 'if I did it', which was supposed to be a thinly veiled 'confession'. I don't even understand how this man could have stood to be in OJ's presence and not wanted to vomit. OJ continued to assert his innocence and that IF he had done it, he wouldn't have been able to do it alone. After the book had been written, the ghostwriter claimed, he sent copies to OJ and OJ wanted him to remove the ENTIRE chapter on the murders, saying that he hated it and that it wasn't correct at all. I was simply disgusted by the few pages that I read, and I don't recommend it to anyone with even the remotest shred of decency.
—Lauren
