How to Get the Most out of a Book Review

You may remember being assigned to write a book report as middle-schooler.  Your teacher assigned such an exercise to a) make sure you had done the assigned reading, and b) make sure you had done the assigned reading well enough to summarize the plot and main themes of the book.  As your education progressed, such assignments grew more and more complicated; you were soon writing essays, précis, theses, and so on, until,  arriving in college, you finally had the freedom to choose your own classes and fled from the discipline of literature for the much more compelling fields of business, management, political science, or engineering.  Since you may be a bit rusty, we would like to offer a little refresher—a Book Review 101 of sorts—so that you might reacquaint yourself with the form and purpose of the book review.  What are book reviews, and why are they written?

At the elemental level, a book review is a reader’s evaluation of the book in question.  This evaluation can range from personal to academic; it can serve to contextualize the work or assess it on its own terms; it can approach the book from the perspective of style, content, plot, language, theme, design, or from any combination of these approaches.  In academia, reviews may take the form of literary or ‘secondary’ criticism, which often calls upon the realms of literary theory, philosophy, and rhetoric to make a critical assessment of the work.  In magazines and journals, book reviews usually focus on recent publications that may be of interest to loyal readers.  Often these types of reviews evaluate the factual, informational, entertaining, or stylistic aspects of a book.    

 Search the Reviews at Amazon Here!

Book reviews themselves may be amateur or professional.  With the advent of the internet it is easy for the amateur to make his or her review available to a wide audience; in fact, such book dealers as Amazon have review forums to which anyone can contribute.  With such an abundance of book reviews available, how should you consider what you are reading? 

To begin with, you should always keep in mind that a review is written by a person with his or her own tastes, political views, and experiences, which may or may not differ from yours.  A good book reviewer will back up his or her evaluations of a book with examples so that you, as reader, can evaluate the evidence for yourself.  If the reviewer says that a book was sloppily put together, he will cite places where the plot does not agree.  If she says it is a brilliant work of genius, she will point to the particular aspects of the book that make it so profoundly intelligent.  Often amateur reviewers will take an “I agree/disagree with” or “I enjoyed/didn’t enjoy this book” stance, and share his or her reasoning.  These reviews can be interesting and informative, if the stance is well supported.  Sometimes a reviewer will include very little evaluation and stick primarily to summary of the book or plot, leaving the job of assessment to future readers.  One should be careful with these types of reviews however, as book summaries might also have a latent bias to them.     

With these cautions in mind, book reviews—from professional reviews found in journals to online book review forums—can provide great educational opportunities for you.  You can see what others have gotten out of a book that you have read or are considering reading.  You can learn more about the author of a book, or gain insight on contemporary thoughts towards a particular genre or writing style.  Should you wander into the realm of literary criticism, you can find evaluations of historical or symbolic aspects of a book that may change the way you understand it.  Or you might simply use a review to decide whether the book is worth buying for yourself or a friend. 

However you use a book review, be a critical reader.  And, should you get inspired to make your own contribution to the world of book reviews, no need to dig out and dust off those middle-school book reports or brush up on the five paragraph essay, simply put down your critical, evaluative thoughts and submit them online.  You’ll find yourself among friends.