What is a Book Review?

A book review is a writer's critical judgment of a book. It is written to interest his reader in the book or give him a wider and deeper understanding of it and help him decide whether to read the book or not.

As it seeks to interpret and comment on the book content, the writer/critic, after a thorough and careful reading of the book, chooses a specific subject for his paper from an aspect of the work to which he has strongly and definitely reacted. He interprets the work in the light of his own reading, his own experiences, and his own principles of selection.

Although the reviewer includes necessary information such as the author's name, the title of the work and the type of book (e.g. fiction, history, travel, etc.), the writer provides a specific heading or the title which concisely but clearly announces the subject. A vague title like " A Criticism of Robert Ludlum's "The Road to Omaha" is too general and does not tell the paper's particular approach to the work. "The Humor in Robert Ludlum's "The Road to Omaha" would be more exact.

The review has one subject, one overall argument. It focuses on the general purpose of the work under study and the techniques used to achieve this purpose.

Never a mere summary, a book review consists of both fact and criticism. The critic selects and arranges some of the incidents from, say, a novel, which support his interpretation. The selection and arrangement are obviously subjective and the interpretation neither "right" nor "wrong" in the conventional sense. A standard reliability, however, requires that the interpretation contradict neither the text being examined nor any established fact about the author and his work.

Although other may have written reviews of the same work, the writer should keep his review independent of those critics and write with freshness and sincerity. Nevertheless, he needs to show the difference between his and other critics' writings.

The use of I and we is generally avoided in a book review as they indicate the writer's excessive concern for himself, which results in irrelevance and wordiness. Likewise, the critic's name or idea makes a weak beginning; establishing the chosen subject and argument first is better.

In summary, a review includes three stages of criticism namely: 1) interpretation (showing what the writer thinks the work means); 2) technical analysis (dealing with the author's style or techniques by which he selects, shapes and presents his material); and 3) judgment (appraising the effectiveness and general purpose of the work).