How to Review a Book

How to Review A Book

Book reviews are designed to give readers a birds-eye view of a book, and to help the reader determine if they want to read the book. As a reviewer, you are the authority because you have read the book, and you are giving your professional opinions. For this project, your audience is not the teacher but the student body of your school. As you write your review, write it with the intention of having it published in the school paper where everyone at your school will read it.

Reading Instructions and Taking Notes

In order to facilitate your preparation for writing your review, the following suggestions are offered as you read the book:

1. Read the entire book, preface, introduction, acknowledgments, conclusions and back of the book material, i.e. appendix, bibliography, notes, etc.

2. As you read, make notes of points you would like to remember or include in your review; points that you agree or disagree with, questions you may have and quotes.

3. In order to remember where these points are located, you could use the following system or a modification of it:

Example: You find a quote you wish to include from, let’s say Chapter 4. In the margins of your notes you would indicate this as follows: 4.58.3. The 4 indicates the chapter. 58 represents the page number, and 3 tells you which paragraph to look for in Chapter 4 page 58. When you finish reading the book, you should have a few pages of such notes. When you begin writing your paper, these notes will help you if you need to check a point or if you want to review what the author said on a particular point. This will eliminate thumbing back through the book trying to find what you want, which means you will save time and your thoughts will be clearer.

Writing the Review

Your book review will consist of three (3) distinct parts.

(1) Brief background about the author, and a statement of the author’s intention or purpose in writing the book. Statements to this effect may be found either in the preface, the introduction, the first chapter, and/or in the conclusion. This information will comprise your first paragraph.

(2) The body of your review will comprise the bulk of your paper. In this section you will inform your readers of what the author says, not your opinions about the book. In other words, you will show what the author says about her/his subject matter. You do this by quoting