Writing a Book Review

By Sowparnika Gopal

This article tells you what a book review is. It will further guide you to writing a good book review that matches the standards required for it to be published.

What is a book review?

A book review is a critical evaluation of a book. Reviews are usually published in a newspaper or a periodical. It involves studying, evaluating, discussing, interpreting and criticizing a literary work of art. Writing a book review needs critical study of the book from the reader’s point of view.
The reviewer analyses and brings out the positive and negative aspects of a book, which is read by people at different places. Book reviews act as publicity engineers for the book.

How to write a book review?

There are certain things to keep in mind while writing a book review.

• The type of book- is it a novel/ short stories/ literary/ technical? What is the category that your book belongs to?
• Who are the readers of the book?
• What is the reader behavior?
• How old is the book you are going to review?
• If the book is old, then what is the take of the other reviewers of the same book on it?
• How much can you substantiate your arguments on the book?

There are many such questions to be answered while reviewing a book.
To make writing a book review easier, it is better to note down all the observations about the book. Be sure of the points that you want to put across. When writing a review, consider the reader your friend to whom you are narrating a story.

The following steps are suggested while writing a book review:

• Mention the name of the book and the author's name in the first paragraph of your review.
• Do not clutter the review with too many comments. Put across your points clearly and put one idea into a paragraph.
• Get the main theme of the book in short in the first paragraph effectively with a few sentences. This should help the reader decide if he should read the book or not.
• Write what is the best thing that you liked about the book and what is it t hat you did not.
• Try to include some quotes from the book, if it helps emphasize a point. Quotes also help the reader to get a feel of the book.
• The review must not plainly tell what the book is; it should give the readers the reviewer's opinion about it.
• Get information about the writer and try to find out what inspired him into the writing of the book. This will help give a touch of reality to the existence of the book.

In short, a well-written book review gives the reader an insight of the book and helps decide his stand on reading the book or not.

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