A book review can be one of the most fun and interesting things to do when it comes to academic tasks, or it can be as painful and time-consuming as a final year research paper. It all depends on the approach you take for writing a book review and the amount of time you spend in understanding how to write a book review!

In this article, we will explain to you the process of writing a book review, along with its different elements which you must take into consideration in order to submit a well-written paper.

Things to be covered:

• What is a book review?
• Format of a book review
• Steps to writing a book review

In order to understand how to write a book review, you must first understand what a book review is, along with its primary purpose!

What is a book review?
A book review is a documented paper, or article, in which a person reviews the contents of a particular book. The reviewer goes in depths to uncover the underlying thoughts and opinions of the author of the book, which are often overlooked by most people.

A book review can be a small article, in a newspaper, or magazine, or even the main topic or a dedicated essay where the contents of the book are analysed in detail. It is most often, assigned to high school and college students, as writing a book review, shows the teacher and professor, that the students have in fact read the book which was assigned to them. 

In addition to this, a book review also teaches students to carefully analyse a piece of document and read between the lines to identify hidden inferences and interpretations. It is why understanding how to write a book review is a great way of improving your critical thinking skills.

Writing a book review is a great way to introduce the concept of academic and professional writing to students, as reviewing a book can be quite a fun activity and enable the students to get used to the format of academic writing.

The scope of a book review can vary depending on the nature of the article, in case of a short magazine, article, the review, may only consist of key details for the story, whereas, in case of a detailed essay, the writer will have to first summarise the events of the book and then move into analysing the important parts of the story with supporting evidence and references.

Format of a Book Review
It is very important to give considerable thought into deciding the format you want to follow while learning how to write a book review! In the academic sense, most college professors, provide a detailed document, which contains the format to be followed while writing a book review. However, if there is no specific format assigned to you for writing a book review, you should not get intimidated, as it gives you the freedom to frame your book in your preferred way as per you own writing style.  

When trying to pick the right format to formulate your book review, there are two most important things which you must consider, first is the format allowed by the institution you are going to submit your book review to, and second is your targeted audience who will be reading your review.

It is important to consider the format allowed by the publishing authority, as most publishers have a standard way of publishing contents, and you must frame your book review as per those regulations. In some cases, there is room for alterations and creativity, but it is best to know the limits and not go overboard. 

However, the second consideration, which is the audience, is also an important aspect while writing a book review. It is because, there are numerous genres of writing, and depending on the genre of the book you are reviewing, you would have to adopt a suitable way or present your book review, so that the key demographic who reads this genre, can easily understand it. Additionally, when submitting a book review, to an academic committee for the purpose of getting graded, it is important to give priority to the format assigned by the professors, as they will be the primary audience of the review.

Introduction
A standard, book review, takes the path of an essay, where the writer, begins with an introduction describing the title, author and publisher of the selected book. It is in this section where the writer must describe the reason behind selecting this particular book and present the main aim of the paper.

Body
The body section is the main part of the book review, where the writer presents their thoughts and opinions. It is important that the author must first summarise and present a brief paragraph on the contents of the book, in order to tell the readers, what aspects this review will cover and the sections and the events from the book which is going to be addressed. It helps the reader in recollecting the information and the related context from the book.

It is at the hands of the author of the review to present the information in the best way possible. In order to achieve this, the author can present a review of the whole book, or break it down into manageable parts and present a review on the most relevant and impactful events from the book.

The body section may be between 3 to 5 paragraphs long, depending on the nature of the book and the word limits, the writer seeks to explore. It is very important for the writer to plan the book review before writing so that they can give justice to the word limit, and provide meaning contents by giving value to each paragraph.

Conclusion
Just like any other essay, a book review should also consist of a conclusion paragraph. In the conclusion paragraph, the writer must bring together all of the ideas and topics, discussed in the review, and present a concluding statement. The conclusion is the final paragraph of the review; there it should leave the readers with a lasting thought, which intrigues them and leaves an impression, solidifying the impact of your book review.

Steps involved in writing a book review
As mentioned earlier, writing a book review can be one of the most complicated tasks, and at the same time as the most fun academic activities. It is why it is important to fully understand the various steps involved which learning how to write a book review effectively.

Step 1: Choosing a book to be reviewed
In order to write a book review, you must first have a book which you can write about. Understanding how to select a suitable book is also an important part of learning how to write a book review. In most cases, the professor, assigns a book to the students, to be reviewed, whereas in many cases students have the freedom, to pick a book of their choice to write a review on.

It is important to pick a book, which is suitable for the nature of the course you are studying. For example: If you’re studying medicine, then the book you select for review, must be related or have a major portion of the book dedicated to the field of medicine and healthcare. In this way, you can ensure that you do a comprehensive analysis and accurately portray the concepts learned by you during your course.

It is advised to shortlist a number of books, and then proceed to pick the best one out of the lot. Only after getting the book, approved should you begin writing your review, as the book review might even be rejected, if it is about the wrong book, which is out of the scope of your course.

The book you choose for your review must be easily available and popularly, known so that people can find it easily. Your book for review should be related to your course, and it should provide you with the opportunity to explore the topics of your course while writing the review.

Step 2: Planning the review
Similar to a research paper, it is important to plan your book review. The first step in planning your book review is to read the book carefully. Even if you have previously read the book, it is important that you give it another look before you begin your review.

Make notes while reading the book and identify the key questions that you want to address in your book. When you identify the answer to these questions, it will help you in making a well-rounded book review. These questions can be:

• What is the main theme of the book?
• The role played by different characters?
• The technique of writing used by the author
• What narrative conventions are used in the book?
• How is this book relevant to your course?
• What is the moral of the story?

Select the format you wish to follow in your book review, and plan the contents of your review by making an outline. Your outline should consist of the different sections; you want to cover in your review, separate in paragraphs.

Step 3: Researching and gathering resources
After making the outline, you must spend time, in learning more about your main points, by researching and gather the sources which you can cite in your review. Providing citations in your sources can prove to be a great way to increase the credibility of the review, as citations and references, depict, that your review, is well researched and your facts are verified by other researchers as well.  

Once you have planned the arguments and claims for your review, you should find relevant sources which you can use to back up your claims. Make sure you only use credible sources from well-known publishers in your review. Keep track of the sources you select as it will enable you to save time while referencing them.

Step 4: Writing the review
Once you have everything you would need to write your book, you can now begin the final step of understanding how to write a book review. Writing the book review is a very easy and fun activity, only if you approach it in the right way. Without planning your review, or spending time in formulating your arguments and claim, your review may come across as amateurish and filled with gaps; this will lead to poor grades. On the other hand, if you have performed the above steps adequately, you can ensure that your book review is well rounded and is easy to follow.

Start by providing a brief introduction to the book, and you can discuss the main theme and topics discussed in the book, with-out going in depths. Describe what you loved about the book and explain them in detail for the readers to understand. In addition to that, you must also address something which you didn’t like about the book, and describe the different alternative routes the author could have explored. While concluding the review, you must summarise the review and bring together all of the points and give a rating to the book you have reviewed. Alternatively, you could also describe if you would or would not recommend this book to a friend.

While writing the review there are few things you should avoid such as comparing two different books or being too critical or negative about the book, and you must also make sure that you keep an unbiased stand while writing the review.

This completes our article on how to write a book review, before ending this article, there is one final tip we would like to give you which is to, always, make a rough draft first and then refine the ideas at a later stage. It will improve your writing significantly and ensure that your article is free from all errors. 

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