General Knowledge Book Art Literature Short Intro Analytical Writing

What this handout is nearly

This handout will help you lot write a book review, a study or essay that offers a critical perspective on a text. It offers a process and suggests some strategies for writing volume reviews.

What is a review?

A review is a disquisitional evaluation of a text, event, object, or phenomenon. Reviews can consider books, manufactures, entire genres or fields of literature, architecture, art, fashion, restaurants, policies, exhibitions, performances, and many other forms. This handout will focus on volume reviews. For a similar consignment, run into 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. It allows you to enter into dialogue and word with the work's creator and with other audiences. You can offer agreement or disagreement and identify where you find the piece of work exemplary or deficient in its knowledge, judgments, or organization. You should clearly state your stance of the work in question, and that argument volition 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 chiliad words, although you may meet lengthier assignments and extended commentaries. In either case, reviews need to be succinct. While they vary in tone, subject field, and style, they share some common features:

• First, a review gives the reader a curtailed summary of the content. This includes a relevant clarification of the topic besides as its overall perspective, argument, or purpose.
• Second, and more importantly, a review offers a disquisitional assessment of the content. This involves your reactions to the work under review: what strikes you every bit noteworthy, whether or not it was effective or persuasive, and how it enhanced your understanding of the bug at hand.
• Finally, in addition to analyzing the work, a review often suggests whether or not the audition would capeesh it.

Condign an expert reviewer: three curt examples

Reviewing can be a daunting task. Someone has asked for your stance about something that you may feel unqualified to evaluate. Who are yous to criticize Toni Morrison's new book if yous've never written a novel yourself, much less won a Nobel Prize? The bespeak is that someone—a professor, a periodical editor, peers in a study group—wants to know what you remember nigh a particular work. You may non be (or feel like) an proficient, simply you need to pretend to be one for your particular audience. Nobody expects you to be the intellectual equal of the piece of work'south creator, but your careful observations tin provide you with the raw fabric to make reasoned judgments. Tactfully voicing agreement and disagreement, praise and criticism, is a valuable, challenging skill, and like many forms of writing, reviews crave you to provide concrete evidence for your assertions.

Consider the post-obit cursory book review written for a history grade on medieval Europe by a student who is fascinated with beer:

Judith Bennett's Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Irresolute World, 1300-1600, investigates how women used to brew and sell the bulk of ale drunk in England. Historically, ale and beer (not milk, wine, or water) were important elements of the English language diet. Ale brewing was low-skill and low status labor that was complimentary to women's domestic responsibilities. In the early fifteenth century, brewers began to brand ale with hops, and they called this new drink "beer." This technique allowed brewers to produce their beverages at a lower cost and to sell it more easily, although women generally stopped brewing once the business organisation became more than profitable.

The pupil describes the subject of the book and provides an accurate summary of its contents. But the reader does non larn some primal information expected from a review: the author's argument, the student'due south appraisal of the book and its argument, and whether or non the student would recommend the book. Equally a disquisitional cess, a book review should focus on opinions, not facts and details. Summary should exist kept to a minimum, and specific details should serve to illustrate arguments.

Now consider a review of the same volume written by a slightly more opinionated educatee:

Judith Bennett'due south Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women'due south Piece of work in a Changing Earth, 1300-1600 was a colossal disappointment. I wanted to know about the rituals surrounding drinking in medieval England: the songs, the games, the parties. Bennett provided none of that information. I liked how the book showed ale and beer brewing as an economical action, but the reader gets lost in the details of prices and wages. I was more than interested in the private lives of the women brewsters. The book was divided into eight long capacity, and I can't imagine why anyone would e'er want to read information technology.

There's no shortage of judgments in this review! But the pupil does not display a working cognition of the book'southward argument. The reader has a sense of what the student expected of the volume, but no sense of what the author herself set out to prove. Although the pupil gives several reasons for the negative review, those examples do not clearly relate to each other as part of an overall evaluation—in other words, in support of a specific thesis. This review is indeed an assessment, only not a critical one.

Here is i final review of the same book:

One of feminism's paradoxes—one that challenges many of its optimistic histories—is how patriarchy remains persistent over time. While Judith Bennett's Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women'southward Piece of work in a Changing World, 1300-1600 recognizes medieval women as historical actors through their ale brewing, it also shows that female agency had its limits with the advent of beer. I had assumed that those limits were religious and political, but Bennett shows how a "patriarchal equilibrium" close women out of economic life too. Her analysis of women's wages in ale and beer production proves that a change in women's work does not equate to a change in working women's status. Contemporary feminists and historians alike should read Bennett's volume and think twice when they crack open their next brewsky.

This student'southward review avoids the bug of the previous 2 examples. It combines counterbalanced opinion and physical example, a critical assessment based on an explicitly stated rationale, and a recommendation to a potential audience. The reader gets a sense of what the book's author intended to demonstrate. Moreover, the pupil refers to an argument well-nigh feminist history in general that places the book in a specific genre and that reaches out to a general audition. The example of analyzing wages illustrates an argument, the analysis engages significant intellectual debates, and the reasons for the overall positive review are apparently visible. The review offers criteria, opinions, and support with which the reader can agree or disagree.

Developing an cess: before you write

There is no definitive method to writing a review, although some critical thinking most the piece of work at manus is necessary before y'all actually brainstorm writing. Thus, writing a review is a two-step procedure: developing an argument about the work nether consideration, and making that argument as you write an organized and well-supported typhoon. Run into our handout on argument.

What follows is a series of questions to focus your thinking as yous 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. Don't feel obligated to address each of the questions; some will exist more relevant than others to the book in question.

• What is the thesis—or main argument—of the book? If the author wanted you to get one idea from the book, what would it be? How does it compare or contrast to the world y'all know? What has the book achieved?
• What exactly is the field of study or topic of the volume? Does the author cover the subject fairly? Does the author cover all aspects of the subject in a counterbalanced manner? What is the approach to the subject (topical, analytical, chronological, descriptive)?
• How does the author support her argument? What prove does she use to prove her bespeak? Do you notice that prove convincing? Why or why not? Does whatever of the author's data (or conclusions) conflict with other books you've read, courses y'all've taken or just previous assumptions you had of the subject?
• How does the author structure her argument? What are the parts that brand upwardly the whole? Does the argument make sense? Does it persuade you? Why or why not?
• How has this volume helped you sympathize the subject? Would you recommend the book to your reader?

Beyond the internal workings of the volume, you may as well consider some information nearly the author and the circumstances of the text's production:

• Who is the writer? Nationality, political persuasion, grooming, intellectual interests, personal history, and historical context may provide crucial details almost how a work takes shape. Does information technology matter, for instance, that the biographer was the subject'due south all-time friend? What difference would information technology make if the author participated in the events she writes nigh?
• What is the book's genre? Out of what field does it emerge? Does it adjust to or depart from the conventions of its genre? These questions tin can provide a historical or literary standard on which to base your evaluations. If you are reviewing the get-go volume ever written on the field of study, it will be important for your readers to know. Keep in mind, though, that naming "firsts"—aslope naming "bests" and "onlys"—can be a risky business unless you're admittedly certain.

Writing the review

One time y'all have fabricated your observations and assessments of the piece of work under review, carefully survey your notes and effort 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 back up your thesis.

Your arguments should develop the thesis in a logical manner. That logic, dissimilar more than standard academic writing, may initially emphasize the author's argument while you develop your own in the course of the review. The relative emphasis depends on the nature of the review: if readers may be more interested in the work itself, yous may want to make the work and the author more prominent; if yous want the review to be about your perspective and opinions, then you may structure the review to privilege your observations over (simply never carve up from) those of the work under review. What follows is only 1 of many ways to organize a review.

Introduction

Since most reviews are brief, many writers brainstorm with a catchy quip or anecdote that succinctly delivers their statement. But you can introduce your review differently depending on the statement and audience. The Writing Heart'southward handout on introductions tin assistance you detect an approach that works. In general, you lot should include:

• The name of the author and the volume championship and the principal theme.
• Relevant details near who the writer is and where he/she stands in the genre or field of inquiry. You could too link the title to the field of study to show how the championship explains the field of study matter.
• The context of the book and/or your review. Placing your review in a framework that makes sense to your audition alerts readers to your "take" on the book. Perhaps you lot want to situate a book about the Cuban revolution in the context of Common cold War rivalries between the United States and the Soviet Union. Another reviewer might want to consider the book in the framework of Latin American social movements. Your choice of context informs your statement.
• The thesis of the book. If you lot are reviewing fiction, this may be hard since novels, plays, and short stories rarely take explicit arguments. But identifying the book's particular novelty, angle, or originality allows yous to prove what specific contribution the piece is trying to make.
• Your thesis near the volume.

Summary of content

This should be brief, as analysis takes priority. In the course of making your assessment, yous'll hopefully be bankroll upward your assertions with physical evidence from the book, so some summary will be dispersed throughout other parts of the review.

The necessary corporeality of summary also depends on your audience. Graduate students, beware! If you are writing book reviews for colleagues—to prepare for comprehensive exams, for instance—yous may want to devote more attention to summarizing the book's contents. If, on the other manus, your audition has already read the book—such every bit a class consignment on the same work—you lot may have more liberty to explore more subtle points and to emphasize your own argument. See our handout on summary for more tips.

Analysis and evaluation of the book

Your analysis and evaluation should be organized into paragraphs that deal with single aspects of your statement. This arrangement can be challenging when your purpose is to consider the book as a whole, just it tin assistance you lot differentiate elements of your criticism and pair assertions with bear witness more than conspicuously. Y'all do not necessarily need to piece of work chronologically through the book as you discuss information technology. Given the statement you desire to brand, you can organize your paragraphs more usefully by themes, methods, or other elements of the book. If yous detect it useful to include comparisons to other books, continue them brief so that the volume nether review remains in the spotlight. Avoid excessive quotation and requite a specific page reference in parentheses when you do quote. Call up that you can land many of the author's points in your ain words.

Conclusion

Sum up or restate your thesis or brand the final judgment regarding the book. Yous should not introduce new evidence for your argument in the conclusion. You can, however, introduce new ideas that go across the book if they extend the logic of your ain thesis. This paragraph needs to balance the book's strengths and weaknesses in guild to unify your evaluation. Did the trunk of your review have three negative paragraphs and ane favorable one? What do they all add together upwardly to? The Writing Heart's handout on conclusions can help y'all make a final cess.

In review

Finally, a few general considerations:

• Review the book in front of you, not the book yous wish the author had written. You lot tin can and should bespeak out shortcomings or failures, only don't criticize the volume for not being something it was never intended to be.
• With whatever luck, the author of the book worked difficult to find the correct words to express her ideas. You should attempt to exercise the same. Precise linguistic communication allows yous to command the tone of your review.
• Never hesitate to claiming an assumption, approach, or argument. Exist certain, however, to cite specific examples to back up your assertions advisedly.
• Try to present a balanced statement about the value of the book for its audience. You're entitled—and sometimes obligated—to phonation strong agreement or disagreement. But keep in listen that a bad volume takes equally long to write as a good one, and every author deserves fair treatment. Harsh judgments are hard to show and can give readers the sense that yous were unfair in your assessment.
• A neat place to larn well-nigh book reviews is to expect at examples. The New York Times Sunday Book Review and The New York Review of Books can show you how professional writers review books.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive listing of resources on the handout's topic, and we encourage you lot to do your own enquiry to find additional publications. Please do non utilise this list as a model for the format of your ain reference list, every bit information technology may non friction match the citation mode you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please encounter the UNC Libraries citation tutorial. We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Drewry, John. 1974. Writing Book Reviews. Boston: Greenwood Printing.

Hoge, James. 1987. Literary Reviewing. Charlottesville: University Virginia of Printing.

Sova, Dawn, and Harry Teitelbaum. 2002. How to Write Volume Reports, 4th ed. Lawrenceville, NY: Thomson/Arco.

Walford, A.J. 1986. Reviews and Reviewing: A Guide. Phoenix: Oryx Press.

---

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.
Yous may reproduce it for non-commercial employ if y'all use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of N Carolina at Chapel Hill

Make a Souvenir

dolphlestathe.blogspot.com

Source: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/book-reviews/

Share this post