how to write an effective book review*

The thing about book reviews is--

No, that's not quite right. There are many, many things about book reviews. To begin with, they play a key role in the book business. Authors write the books, editors clean up the books, agents pitch the books, publishers print the books, and publicists get readers excited about the books. This is where reviewing comes in. Reviewers get their paws on books first, and once they've read the book from cover to cover, they sit down and write up a review. Whether the reviewer works for The New York Times Book Review, Sacramento Book Review, San Antonio Book Review, or bookreporter.com, reviewers are a very important cog in the publicity machine. A glowing review may end up on the back cover of the book jacket. A negative review can drive down sales.



In the internet era, reviews can reach an audience of hundreds, or even hundreds of thousands, in mere seconds. It is possible to have an audience that isn't merely local or regional, but global. Given the speed at which information and opinions travel these days, book reviews have become even more influential than they were in years and decades past. Many of the better known vehicles for reviews have downsized (like the L.A. Times review section) or folded (like Kirkus--which has apparently been saved), but dozens of online book review websites have sprung up overnight to fill in the void. Instead of a few very loud voices, there are literally thousands of little ones, shouting out their love for The Museum of Innocence, their ambivalence toward In Their Blood, their dislike of Level 26.

In fairness, those few loud voices have one thing going for them that the average contributor to AllReaders.com doesn't, and that's professionalism. To help begin to combat this theme of lazy and often sub par writing, I offer the following guidelines.

Reviews are like miniaturized essays -- remember high school? Your teacher more than likely taught you the basic three paragraph foundation for an essay: introduction, body, conclusion. It's the same with reviews. There should be a catchy introductory paragraph, a middle paragraph that gives a short summary of the key plot points (or central themes if it's nonfiction), and a final paragraph that explains what the reviewer did or didn't enjoy about the book.

Not all books need to be explicitly recommended or not -- sometimes a book is just mediocre. The vast majority of them will be fairly good. Some will be great. A few will be just plain awful, in which case reviewers should keep in mind that the book that makes them want to take Dorothy Sayers' advice and hurl it away from them with great force is someone's labor of love. Don't pan it, but do address what you find problematic.

A good review is not a summary. Readers don't need a lengthy summary; they can find that on the back cover or inside flap of the book jacket. They aren't looking for a detailed recap, they're looking for guidance. Is it worth buying? Is it a challenging read? Are the characters three dimensional?

Sometimes a book has a very specific audience. If you are not that audience, or if the genre of book is one you absolutely loathe reading, then don't review it, for crying out loud. If you can't stand teen romance, then don't review Twilight**. You're predisposed to review it harshly, which is unfair to the author. If you are that audience, do your best to review objectively. Going overboard heaping praise on every book in your genre of choice, regardless of the writing quality, will lead to your well written review of Twilight being read as "OMG Bella & Edward 4Ever! Yay romantic sparkling vampires!"

Remember your high school English teacher's number one rule on research papers: never use "I" or "you" when writing. There are two reasons for this. The first is that if you're attempting to write a professional sounding review, inserting yourself into the review by including personal anecdotes or by directly addressing the reader makes your review seem informal and amateurish. The second is that most people reading book reviews only want to know about the book, not about the reviewer.

Finally, if you're going to pass judgment on a book, have the decency to read the whole thing. This should be obvious.

Go forth! Read! Review! And remember -- San Antonio Book Review is always looking for new reviewers.


*if you're looking to submit one to a site like allreaders.com.  If you have your own literary blog, then you're no doubt a smart cookie and are unlikely to need help constructing coherent and correct sentences.  I applaud you (and most likely subscribed to your rss feed).
**Unless you're a contributor to Cracked.com, in which case, please keep up the good work.