Monday, June 29, 2020

How to Write a Book Review

Write a critical book review This article was written to broader audience (not for professional writers). It is not necessary to look for some secrets of literary criticism in here or to search for strict critical analysis of the writing. As it is untended for amateurs, you can find here the types of book review exist and some tips for people who like to write reviews on books and want to improve themselves in it and do it better. So, sharpen your pencils, get yourself comfortable and lets get it started. In nutshell, the review process of a book, a game, a film is called to make a certain impression about the writing among the readers or the audience. This is a small text (the standard size of it is 1800-3600 characters, one or two pages of A4 format), which contains a review, structuring and analysis of the work itself. In this article, we will mainly talk about book reviews, although much of the information presented here and the techniques stated can be used in writing reviews for films, games, music CDs, etc. There are several types of the review. Here are the main types of it: Official review. It is printed in a government institutions or presented as departmental publication which serves as a document of national importance. It is written strictly by a chancellor, with observance of all norms of etiquette, in neutral or restrained type of delivering it. Functional review. It is intended to create an impression of the book in the light of specific purposes and objectives: how the writing fits to the particular book series, how many of the copies can be sold from it, whether it brings up or covers any specific issues. It is written clearly and intelligibly. Thus the content is more important than the form. Informative review. It is aiming for potential readers and buyers, in order to help them in making a decision it is worth reading or not. It is written simply, with a drop of analysis and often supported with a couple of quotes form the writing. Publicist’s review. In this type of review the author focuses on the problem, which society is about to ignore or doesn’t pay much attention to. It is written harsh, provocative and disputable. Critical review. The work (and often the authors point) is divided into pieces and disassembled word by word. Did the author said what he wanted to say, what do the readers think about it and what the overall impression of the writing is- these are the main questions to be answered in critical book review. The main requirements while doing critical review is to follow the logic, put an argument on each statement, make the objective and consequent conclusions out of it. A critique consists of thoughts, responses, and reactions. It is not necessarily to be negative. Regardless of how negative or positive your critique is, you need to be able to justify and support your position. But how to write a critical book review? Write a book review A book review is more than a book report or summary of a book’s contents. A review is a critical essay evaluating the merits of an academic work. Its purpose is not to prove that you read the book—which is understood as a given—but to show that you can think critically about what you’ve read. A book review requires a lot of thought and effort. It is not a simple task. Thus you can find a lot of people search for examples for it, e.g. â€Å"write a book review example†, â€Å"write a short book review†, â€Å"book review format† or sometimes even more specific: â€Å"write a book review about Robinson Crusoe†. The process can be broken down into three main stages: as you read; as you prepare to write; and, as you write. With each stage there are a series of questions and factors to consider as you work on your review. Let’s give a broader perspective on the contents of writing a book review which can be wrapped up in 10 steps: Read the book and take notes while reading When doing so, make notes on some of the following questions: What kind of article is it (for example does it present data or does it present purely theoretical arguments)? What are the main issues raised by the author? How does all this relate to your own experience, ideas and views? Organizing your review One of the good practices here is to organize your review and summarize the text keeping in mind that it was not read by other person. Summary In this section you may write down some interesting facts which are worth discussing. Try to explain how these ideas were constructed and define if they are purely theoretical or can be used in practice? Evaluation This part, being one of the most important parts of the review in general, needs to contain examples of explicit or implicit critique of your review. Try to look for the examples of how to make it . Summary language analysis It may include the information on the tone appears to be used, the aim of the writing, numbers of arguments indicated and motivation or encouraging elements presented in the writing. Evaluation of language used You should define if the arguments used are convincing enough, highlight the strength and weaknesses that other researchers pointed out. Conclusion language You my conclude your review by saying if the book was informative, if it sends the message to its audience. All in all, a professional reviewer always knows for whom he is writing the review (in other words, what his target audience is), why he choose this particular work for review and what goal he wants to achieve while writing the review. But if you are learning, you will need a lot of practice to examine another persons thoughts on a topic from your point of view. If you are not sure how to do it, you may wish to look for professional services to help you with that.

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