When the last page is over and the book has evoked a vivid emotion (whether it’s a positive or negative emotion), there’s an urge to share your impressions. Don’t waste time, because this is the perfect moment to write a review of the book you’ve read.
Reviews are important. Why? Because discussing works helps the literary process move forward: authors get feedback, and new readers are motivated to buy books and share their thoughts. Who knows, maybe it will be your review that starts a new literary discussion.
It doesn’t matter if you already have your literary blog, want to create a cool Facebook post, or leave a review of a book in a community, maybe on the shop page where you bought it, enter a reviewer contest, or it’s just your home task. Moreover, if it’s your home assignment, so hire a professional paper writer to save you time. It’s a good idea for students, who don’t have much time for this, don’t want to write it, or just aren’t sure about their opportunities. Moreover, to find out more about WritingAPaper, you just need to contact the best writing services (and you have a chance to get a special discount). WritingAPaper can deal with any of your problems from essay writing to a dissertation. Either way, the skill of creating great reviews is sure to come in handy.
We’ve decided to share some simple rules that will make your review emotional, and informative, and help you avoid common mistakes.
<h2>So, what is a review?
A review is a review, in this case of a literary work, which most often contains a description of the work, your impressions, and a bit of literary analysis. There are many varieties of reviews and they are so different that some are more like official documents and others are free-form essays.
We will focus on the most widespread variant on the web – review-review, which will answer a new reader the main question: is this book worth taking up? For those who are already familiar with the work, such a review is necessary because it makes you think and see the text through your eyes. An interesting and coherent review still grabs both of them.
Moreover, a review benefits the reviewer as well, because it helps to go deeper into the text, look for additional information and systematize your thoughts. It’s not the same as compulsorily writing a school paper on a boring topic. It is up to you to choose where to put the accents, and from what angle to highlight what you have read. The main thing is that it should be well-reasoned.
<h2>About the length of the review
There is an old literary anecdote that says that the longest novel by Victor Hugo had the world’s tiniest one-sentence review.
The reality was this. Hugo sent the manuscript of Les Misérables to a publisher and went on holiday. When the novel was published, Hugo decided to find out how things were going and wrote a letter to his publisher with only one question mark. To which he received a respectable reply: “!” It is this exclamation mark that has been called the shortest review in the world.
But let’s get to the specifics: as a rule, a review is between a thousand and five thousand characters with spaces. On average, book reviews online are no longer than three and a half thousand characters. This volume is enough for an extended response if it is structured clearly.
<h2>Structure of the review. Go according to the plan
We highlighted the main points on which we recommend orientation in the work on the review and supplemented them with some comments.
1. Information about the book. First, it is the title, author, and genre of the work. Secondly, ask yourself: is it a new book, already a bestseller, or a classic? A stand-alone work, or maybe a book in a series or a sequel to a saga? Does the book have high-profile awards? And the author? Is he a debutant or an established master? Find the answers to these questions and make a succinct introduction out of them. All this should take 10-15% of the length of the review. Some sources write about 1-2 first sentences, but that narrows the room for maneuvering too much because sentence length is relative. So let it be a percentage.
2. A short translation of the content. In a nutshell, in two words, about the plot and the characters. But without spoilers. Focus on the beginning of the work, as a rule, if you describe it succinctly and add a few details, it will be a summary of the plot. You can also refer to the book’s synopsis at this point and link directly to it. If you are planning to share a review on a bookstore, publisher, or community site, pay attention to whether the synopsis on the site itself contains the book description. This will determine how much the second paragraph will be. Put up to 20% of the text on it. However, it’s still important to remember about the best essay writing service, which can write your book review instead of you. The prices are affordable for every student and high-class papers guarantee an excellent mark.
3. Your impressions. Write what you liked or, on the contrary, didn’t like. You can also compare your opinion here with the reviews of critics or your impressions of other works by the author, or with works of the same genre. Be argumentative and avoid pseudo-expertise. Instead, point out specifically what you think is flawed or unconvincing. Focus on your perception and do not write conclusions about what the author meant. Avoid passages like “the author was trying to express”, “the author meant to say”, “the author thinks” and so on. It seems that this section can be an endless, but verbose evaluation of a work without analysis of the text – it is not that unprofessional, it is, above all, boring to read, remember that. And also remember that no one ever really knows what the author wanted to say, often not even the authors themselves. So express your thoughts and feelings and don’t cling to the authors’ projections. Also, leave something of your opinions for the conclusion and recommendation to the readers. The volume of this part is about 20% too. Let’s move on.
4. Your analyze of the work. We have somewhere between 40-50% left and the majoruty of this volume is devoted to the analysis of the text. The main idea, structure, characters, artistic means, imagery-symbols, pace and rhythm of narration, originality of the plot, references in the text to other literary works, and many other things can be contained in this section. And the word “may” is the keyword here. What to cover in the analysis of the work, is up to you. Just remember that you are writing a review, not a critical article. Don’t be shy about your thoughts and associations, point out the flaws and good points of the book, explain your position, and be a reader’s guide to the book. Sometimes this point is split into two: pure analysis and just your comments on strengths and weaknesses. Do it the way you feel comfortable with it.
5. Your evaluation, conclusions, and advice to readers. That’s the end. Summarise all of the above and address the reader. Here, for a clue as to exactly how to do this, you are helped by a question: do you recommend buying this book? What for? What exactly do you need to pay attention to in it? What did you find most comprehensible? Do you plan to reread it and give it as a gift? Who should like this book, and who is its target audience? Find the answers to these questions, select the most important ones and form a conclusion from them.