Jul 23, · An exercise that requires careful attention, book reviews sharpen the writer’s lens and uncover paths that can take us, and our writing, to where we want to go. How to Write a Book Review A book review is not a summary Book reviews typically evaluate recently-written works. They offer a brief description of the text’s key points and often provide a short appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the work. Readers sometimes confuse book reviews with book reports, but the two are not identical Jul 28, · What ARE books on writing? My views on what constitutes a book on writing are fairly catholic. Indeed, it would me more accurate to denote the books I review as books for writers, rather than books on writing. The latter tend to have titles like “How to write fiction”, or “How to write
17 Book Review Examples to Help You Write the Perfect Review | Reedsy Discovery
This handout will help you write a book review, a report or essay that offers a critical perspective on a text. It offers a process and suggests some strategies for writing book reviews. A writing book reviews is a critical evaluation of a text, event, object, or phenomenon, writing book reviews. Reviews can consider books, writing book reviews, articles, entire genres or fields of literature, architecture, art, fashion, restaurants, policies, exhibitions, performances, and many other forms.
This handout will focus on book reviews, writing book reviews. For a similar assignment, see our handout on literature reviews. Above all, a review makes an argument. The most important element of a review is that it is a commentary, not merely a summary. You can offer agreement or disagreement and identify where you writing book reviews the work exemplary or deficient in its knowledge, judgments, or organization.
You should clearly state your opinion of the work in question, and that statement will probably resemble other types of academic writing, with a thesis statement, supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Typically, reviews are brief. In newspapers and academic journals, they rarely exceed words, although you may encounter lengthier assignments and extended commentaries.
In either case, reviews need to be succinct. While they vary in tone, writing book reviews, subject, and style, they share some common features:. Reviewing can be a daunting task. Someone has asked for your opinion about something that you may feel unqualified to evaluate.
The point is that someone—a professor, writing book reviews, a journal editor, peers in a study group—wants to know what you think about a particular work.
You may not be or feel like an expert, writing book reviews, but you need to pretend to be one for your particular audience. Tactfully voicing agreement and disagreement, praise and criticism, is a valuable, challenging skill, and like many forms of writing, reviews require you to provide concrete evidence for your assertions. Consider the following brief book review written for a history course on medieval Europe by a student who is fascinated with beer:.
The student describes the subject of the book and provides an accurate summary of its contents. As a critical assessment, a book review should focus on opinions, not facts and details. Summary should be kept to a minimum, and specific details should serve to illustrate arguments. The reader has a sense of what the student expected of the book, but no sense of what the author herself set out to prove.
Although the writing book reviews gives several reasons for writing book reviews negative review, those examples do not clearly relate to each other as writing book reviews of writing book reviews overall evaluation—in other words, in support of a specific thesis. This review is indeed an assessment, but not a critical one. It combines balanced opinion and concrete example, a critical assessment based on an explicitly stated rationale, writing book reviews, and a recommendation to a potential audience.
Moreover, writing book reviews, the student refers to an argument about feminist history in general that places the book in a specific genre and that reaches out to a general audience. The example of analyzing wages illustrates an argument, the analysis engages significant intellectual debates, and the reasons for the overall positive review are plainly visible. The review offers criteria, opinions, and support with which the reader can agree or disagree.
There is no definitive method to writing book reviews a review, although some critical thinking about the work at hand is necessary before you actually begin writing. Thus, writing a review is a two-step process: developing an argument about the work under consideration, and making that argument as you write an organized and well-supported draft.
See our handout on argument. What follows is a series of questions to focus your thinking as you dig into the work at hand. While the questions specifically consider book reviews, you can easily transpose them to an analysis of performances, exhibitions, and other review subjects. Once you have made your observations and assessments of the work under review, carefully survey your notes and attempt to unify your impressions into a statement that will describe the purpose or thesis of your review.
Check out our handout on thesis statements. Then, outline the arguments that support your thesis. Your arguments should develop the thesis in a logical manner. The relative emphasis depends on the nature of the review: if readers may be more interested in the work writing book reviews, you may want to make the work and the author more prominent; if you want the review to be about your perspective and opinions, writing book reviews, then you may structure the review to privilege your observations over but never separate from those of the work under review.
What follows is just one of many ways to organize a review. Since most reviews are brief, many writers begin with a catchy quip or anecdote that succinctly delivers their argument. But you can introduce your review differently depending on the argument and audience. In general, you should include:. This should be brief, as analysis takes priority. The necessary amount of summary also depends on your audience. Graduate students, beware!
If, on the other hand, your audience has already read the book—such as a class assignment on the same work—you may have more liberty to explore more subtle points and to emphasize your own argument. See our handout on summary for more tips. Your analysis and evaluation should be organized into paragraphs that deal with single aspects of your argument.
This arrangement can be challenging when your purpose is to consider writing book reviews book as a whole, but it can help you differentiate elements of your criticism and pair assertions with evidence more clearly. You do not necessarily need to work chronologically through the book as you discuss it. Given the argument you want to make, you can organize your paragraphs more usefully by themes, methods, or other elements of the writing book reviews. If you find it useful to include comparisons to other books, keep them brief so that the book under review remains in the spotlight.
Avoid excessive quotation and give a specific page reference in parentheses when you do quote. Sum up or restate your thesis or make the final judgment regarding the book. You should not introduce new evidence for your argument in the conclusion.
You can, however, writing book reviews, introduce new ideas that go beyond the book if they extend the logic of your own thesis.
Did the body of your review have three negative paragraphs and one favorable one? What do they all add up to?
We consulted these works while writing this handout. Please do not use this list as a model for the writing book reviews of your own reference list, writing book reviews, as it may not match the citation style you are using.
For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial, writing book reviews. We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback. Hoge, James. Literary Reviewing. Charlottesville: University Virginia of Press. Sova, Dawn, writing book reviews Harry Teitelbaum.
How to Write Book Reports4th ed. Walford, A. Reviews and Reviewing: A Guide. Phoenix: Oryx Press. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4. You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Make a Gift. Skip to main content.
How to Write a Book Review
, time: 5:22The Benefits of Writing Book Reviews - Writer's Digest
Jul 23, · An exercise that requires careful attention, book reviews sharpen the writer’s lens and uncover paths that can take us, and our writing, to where we want to go. How to Write a Book Review A book review is not a summary Book reviews typically evaluate recently-written works. They offer a brief description of the text’s key points and often provide a short appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the work. Readers sometimes confuse book reviews with book reports, but the two are not identical Jul 28, · What ARE books on writing? My views on what constitutes a book on writing are fairly catholic. Indeed, it would me more accurate to denote the books I review as books for writers, rather than books on writing. The latter tend to have titles like “How to write fiction”, or “How to write
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