A book review is a piece of critical writing that truly means commenting on another piece of writing, a book. Like other expressive writings, a book review must follow style and format to score well with the target audience. It is more so since your target audience would be more critical of you as a review writer. You must be much more careful with principles of writing and quality of content when writing (or attempting to write) a book review.
This article would give you basic understanding about the dynamics of writing a book review. Here are some great tips on writing a quality book review:
1. Give that book a critical read
Merely reading a book for fun is very different from reading a book with intent to write a review. A review writer must ideally read the book with a deeper perspective and understanding to critically analyze the book. An intimate understanding of the book contents is the first step to a quality book review.
2. Get an understanding of the author view point and core idea
It is ultimately important to have a correct idea and understanding of the author viewpoint and core idea. It is smart to pen down details of the author ideas and how well they represent the core theme of the book.
3. It is important to follow the standard layout to plan than flow of review
Having complete your critical book reading, it is important to plan the lay of a review. Unfortunately, there is no standard format for a book review, however, 2/3 of the content is generally kept to summarize the book whereas if the actual evaluation and critique of the book. In general, it is imperative for a book reviewer to provide a summary of the book being reviewed.
4. The importance of covering critical details
Credibility is important for a book review and nothing beats the inclusion of important details in achieving it. A reviewer must always add headings like title, scope of the book and its theme to impart a broader understanding to the review audience. Additionally this information lends weight to the authenticity of a book review as well.
5. Provide the review audience with a balanced summary
A reviewer must always support his contention with quotations and phrases. This is important to entice a reader in reading the review completely. There must always be an element of “what’s coming next” in a review to keep it interesting for the target audience. A review should not be in “all out” opposition of a writer’s viewpoint in totality. A disagreement with book writer must be supported with intelligent and interesting arguments (duly supported with plausible facts).
6. Close the argument with a personal view
An indispensable part of a book review is the reviewer personal view and take on the book contents. You must include details like; validity of plot, loop holes, positive and negative points etc. It is important to end the review on a positive note no matter how serious is the disagreement of the reviewer with the book writer.
