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tvrandhavane 's review for:
Common Sense on Mutual Funds
by John C. Bogle
The book has some valuable ideas and the author seems genuinely interested in the welfare of mutual fund shareholders, but the writing style really let me down. This is one of the dryest books that I have ever read. A lot of metaphors are used where they don't fit, where they seem unnecessary, and where they appear stretched.
It didn't help that the book uses a lot of jargon. The author assumes that the reader is familiar with the concepts and definitions (which I am not). For example, some of the causal relationships have been assumed to be obvious. It wasn't obvious to me and I had to guess why A follows B. This made the book extremely hard to read. On the other hand, if I knew all the causal relationships in the book, then would I even need to read the book? To be fair, the author has explained some of these causal relationships and concepts in later chapters, but that comes after they have already been used. A re-organization would have made the book much, much better. Maybe it's the editor's fault.
All that cribbing about the writing style aside, the book indeed seems useful for investing in mutual funds (is it outdated since the last edition was 12 years ago?). I learned a lot. I just wish that the journey had been less bumpy. 2 Stars.
It didn't help that the book uses a lot of jargon. The author assumes that the reader is familiar with the concepts and definitions (which I am not). For example, some of the causal relationships have been assumed to be obvious. It wasn't obvious to me and I had to guess why A follows B. This made the book extremely hard to read. On the other hand, if I knew all the causal relationships in the book, then would I even need to read the book? To be fair, the author has explained some of these causal relationships and concepts in later chapters, but that comes after they have already been used. A re-organization would have made the book much, much better. Maybe it's the editor's fault.
All that cribbing about the writing style aside, the book indeed seems useful for investing in mutual funds (is it outdated since the last edition was 12 years ago?). I learned a lot. I just wish that the journey had been less bumpy. 2 Stars.