Book Review: The Skinny on Real Estate Investing
The Skinny on Real Estate
When I consented to review The Skinny on Real Estate Investing, I assumed I’d be reviewing a book, and not a pamphlet illustrated by my 8-year old niece who drools a lot and still has some trouble negotiating bathroom time. This review might run longer than the book itself.
Jim Randel’s series of illustrated The Skinny on titles boasts that it’s “For Really Busy People!” It’s also suitable For Really Fidgety People who can’t get through a book longer than 10,000 words. The lengthiest passage is the introduction, which runs a full page and explains The Skinny on’s M.O. of culling swaths of information into a workable whole. But it doesn’t explain the distracting primary illustrations that adorn every page.
The jacket quotes all attest to Randel’s success as an investor, but none of them speak about the book itself.
Randel is an attorney, with condescension in his blood. He’s in love with his own (lame) sense of humor, and uses an asterisk in one panel with the footnote, “*Did you catch the metaphor?” No, I didn’t. Please explain it to me again, Attorney Boy, using something less complex than kindergarten sentences. Randel also has an amateur’s pedantic insistence on avoiding contractions, the bane of the self-important, self-published, self-righteous author. This makes for a book that is simultaneously juvenile and stilted. Maybe Randel avoids apostrophes because he can’t punctuate – he uses “+/-25%” where “~25%” should go, which makes a huge difference when calculating home values.
It’s barely possible to repeat yourself in a book this short, but he does. Did you know Randel was born in Perkins, Ohio? If you didn’t, don’t worry. He’ll tell you again. Several times.
He even puts a commercial for one of his other books right in the middle of the narrative.
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