5 Strategies to Write Objective Book Review

A book review is one of the many writing tasks students face during college years - yet it’s one of the most challenging for many. Unlike a book report, where you only need to give a brief summary of the text, a book review requires you to analyze the writing deeply, expressing your thoughts, and supporting them with examples.

So how can you write a book review that would be considered impressive (or at least good) by your professor? Here are 5 strategies that could help you do so:

1. Prepare early.

If you have certain guidelines given to you by your professor, study them to ensure that you won’t forget anything important. If you don’t have any, still consider starting the whole preparation process as early as possible.

Even if a deadline isn’t soon, it’s always better to read a book at least two times to pay attention to all the details. So the earlier you’ll finish preparing, the sooner you can move on to reading.

Preparation isn’t only about reading the guidelines - it could be also about looking for good book review examples, as well as thinking what should you focus on during a review writing.

2. Write down the most important questions.

Writing a review is much easier when you know what questions you need to focus on in the first place. Lucky for you, there are some basic questions that could apply to most books - for example, what makes this book a classic, what is the main conflict, how does the main character develop, and so on.

You can come up with the list of questions you intend to answer and keep it near during the writing process. This will remind you of what to pay attention to.

3. Read carefully.

This might seem obvious but actually, a careful, mindful reading is one of the most complicated parts of the process and the main reason of students turning to different websites to ask for help with the book review writing.

Pay attention to what interests you, what makes you feel bored, what causes other strong feelings inside you. It’s your reading experience you’ll be writing about later - so make sure to memorize the most of it.

4. Take notes in the process.

A good review should be supported with examples and even quotes from the book. Of course, looking for the right quotes and specific examples after you finish reading could be a challenge. And that’s the reason why you should take notes in the process.

Write down the details that caught your attention, the quotes you would possibly want to include, the names of the characters (especially secondary ones), so you won’t forget them. Doing this doesn’t take much time but can help you greatly later with writing.

5. Keep the strengths and weaknesses in mind.

Sometimes you get to review a book you don’t like at all - or, on the contrary, like very much. Either way is okay, but you need to keep in mind that a strong review is about highlighting both strengths and weaknesses of a book. Sure, you can assume that there are more strength than weaknesses (or the opposite) and came to a conclusion that you like or don’t like a book at the end of your review. However, it’s still important to focus on both positive and negative aspects before that.

If this would make it easier for you, try creating a list of book’s strength and weaknesses and fill it during reading. To some of us, this could be much easier than remembering all the positive and the negative aspects after finishing reading.

Of course, no tips could make your book review instantly great. They could only show you what to focus on, helping to prepare for the reading better and ensuring that you won’t forget anything important during writing. The rest is up to you!

Author's Note

Richard Nolan is a professional educator and team building coach, sharing his experience in spheres of writing, blogging, entrepreneurship, and psychology. Richard writes for numerous blogs and gives useful tips for bloggers and students. Follow the link to see the ways how to write college essay properly.