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Book Critique: How to Review Insightfully
Writing book critiques is one of the most exciting academic tasks you may have during your studies. For one thing, it involves reading the book, which is entertaining in itself. For another thing, it involves deepening and enriching your understanding of the book with background research. However entertaining the book itself might be, writing a book critique presupposes certain procedures that you should observe in order to get your assignment right.
Book Critique Writing: Read the Book
However ridiculous it may sound, reading the book for purposes of writing a book critique is not that simple. Consider the following:
- always take notes during reading (with pages for reference!): it is impossible to remember all dates, places, actions, quotes, and impressions which you might need later on for writing your book critique;
- if needed, re-read the book for specific details.
Book Critique Writing: Conduct Background Research
Books do not appear out of nowhere. Therefore when writing your book critique, you should analyze the book in a certain context, which may include:
- a historical period;
- a social tendency;
- the author’s personality; etc.
Obviously, you will need to do some background reading and provide comparison (or contrast) of the book with its background.
Book Critique Writing: Organize Your Ideas
Having both the book and the background information, start writing your book critique:
- introduce the book title, genre, author, and any other relevant factual information;
- provide a brief summary of the book;
- choose the focus of your analysis: the plot, the setting, the characters, certain scenes, main themes, manner of presentation.
- illustrate your points with examples from the book.