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How to Write a Book Review – Structure, Rules

People who love reading know how much they sometimes want to share their impressions of the work they have read. You can personally discuss with others whether the work you read was fascinating or boring. But there is also the option of creating a response. To make it as informative and literate as possible, you should understand how to write a book review.

For sure, it’s not the easiest task to write a perfect book review. Fortunately, you just need to type in Google “write my paper please ASAP” and the pro writers help you. There are many special services, which can help with not only book or movie reviews but essays, term papers, etc. There are really a huge number of such services, and you have to contact the Reddit essay writing service to understand which one is the best. If you still want to write it on your own, here is the guidance on how to create the perfect review.

Rules of composition

There are unspoken rules for writing a review that must be adhered to for the work to be truly worthwhile:

Read the book carefully, several times if possible. A competent analysis of the work is impossible without fully understanding it. Sometimes the first acquaintance with a book is not enough. If this is the case, go back to the beginning and try to find something you haven’t seen before. And then take some time to reflect and analyze what you have read.

Before writing a review, you should decide what kind of evaluation the reviewer thinks the text deserves. Of course, it is not always possible to give an unambiguous opinion about what you have read, but it is not necessary. On the contrary, it is good if the review points out both the strengths and weaknesses of the text. However, the result should be some kind of conclusion, in which the author will state the result of his reflections and recommendations to potential readers.

The statement about the work should be supported by quotations from the text. For example, if a character is characterized as exclusively negative, this should be demonstrated by his or her words or actions occurring in the story.

Remember that this is most often a monograph, i.e. a review of a particular book, rather than a review of an author’s entire bibliography. It is possible to compare the work in question with other works by the writer, noting their similarities and differences, but only the text to which the review is devoted should be evaluated. In addition, it is unethical to make personal remarks, i.e. to transfer negative impressions of the work to its creator.

It is useful to specify the target audience. Often people read reviews to find out if the book will potentially be of interest to them.

Write intelligently. The whole impression of an interesting review will be ruined if it is written with grammatical or factual errors, so you should check the text carefully before submitting it to your readers.

Once you know the general rules to follow when writing, you can move on to the structure of the review.

Good structure

Several elements should be in a competent and useful reader. These are included in the outline of the review. These include:

  • This element is a must in the text. A review where the reader has to guess for himself what work is in question looks specific.
  • Information about the author. Of course, it is necessary to know the surname of the master of fiction or his pseudonym. Sometimes it would be appropriate to specify the years of his life and work, the genre in which he worked.
  • Characteristics of the work and its publication. Not out of place to indicate the year in which the text was printed, its volume, and the language of the original. The design of the publication is the calling card of the work, and the extent to which it corresponds to the content may well be reflected in the review.
  • Short plot. It is not necessary to disclose important information about the events of the book in the review, because those who have not yet read it may become familiar with it. But an abstract of what the picture unfolds in the pages of the work and a summary of the artistic features of the text, its strengths, and weaknesses, will be useful.
  • Extracts from the text are not only meant to reinforce any statement about the book, but they can also reveal a great deal about the writer’s ideas and the theme of the story. To avoid searching for aphorisms for a long time while creating a response, you can mark the most interesting ones with bookmarks in the book.
  • Own opinion. The review should not be cold and detached, it is read not only by those who are still familiar with the book but also by those who want to compare the impression. Therefore, the reviewer’s personal opinion will be of interest to both like-minded people and supporters of other points of view. The main thing is to argue your position when parsing the book’s contents.
  • This part of the review is directly influenced by personal impressions of what one has read. Based on them, the reviewer recommends or does not recommend the book to read, calling it interesting or useless for a particular audience.

Formatting

The format of the review depends on the purpose of writing it. If it is an online review, there are usually no strict requirements on literary websites. If the work is written for a journal, an academic community, or a specific institution, there may be conditions for the admission of the review to print. These should be clarified in advance. In the absence of specific requirements, it is better to follow the following standards:

  • font – Times New Roman, 12 or 14 points;
  • Half-spacing in the paragraph;
  • 2-5 pages in length and numbered (longer reviews are called critical articles).

It is useful to duplicate an already printed text on an electronic medium. This way you do not have to worry about its loss or deterioration.

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Sample review

One of the examples can be used as a book review. The main thing is to supplement the sentences given with details, giving the work liveliness and volume.

The first book I read by J. Galsworthy was The Forsyte Saga. The author published it in 1906.

The story is all about one wealthy family who put material possessions before anything else. This is perfectly illustrated by the author’s description of the head of the family: ‘Old Jolyon is the emblem of his family, class, and beliefs: the grey head and convex forehead are the embodiment of moderation, order, and love of property.

Jolyon’s son, Soms Forsyth is a successful man with a law license. He is married to an incredibly beautiful woman, the coveted guest of all social events, but is unhappy. The author hints that the reason for the troubled life in the family is the husband’s encroachment on his wife as his soulless property.

However, such a caricatured portrayal of the wealthy was incomprehensible to me. I must have read it at the wrong time, or not in the best translation into Ukrainian. Unfortunately, I do not speak English well enough to read the original. Perhaps, therefore, my impressions were lower than expected and I will refrain from any recommendations.

Jeff Campbell