The Assemblagist

Years ago, I down­loaded and saved the fol­low­ing “How To Write a Book Review” and per­haps should share it with my read­ers. Remind­ing myself of the finer points of crit­i­cal analy­sis is always in vogue. If I can’t talk to me, well… who else will lis­ten? The fol­low­ing quote is from a long for­got­ten web­site but I see the Los Ange­les Val­ley Library has almost the exact same arti­cle pub­lished today online.

A book review is a descrip­tion, crit­i­cal analy­sis, and an eval­u­a­tion on the qual­ity, mean­ing, and sig­nif­i­cance of a book, not a retelling. It should focus on the book’s pur­pose, con­tent, and author­ity. A crit­i­cal book review is not a book report or a sum­mary. It is a reac­tion paper in which strengths and weak­nesses of the mate­r­ial are ana­lyzed. It should include a state­ment of what the author has tried to do, eval­u­ates how well (in the opin­ion of the reviewer) the author has suc­ceeded, and presents evi­dence to sup­port this evaluation.

There is no right way to write a book review. Book reviews are highly per­sonal and reflect the opin­ions of the reviewer. A review can be as short as 50 – 100 words, or as long as 1500 words, depend­ing on the pur­pose of the review.

Books on hand for pos­si­ble inclu­sion in reviews/​articles forth­com­ing on BlogCritics:

the pos­si­bil­ity of every­thing, a mem­oir by Hope Edel­man. Bal­lan­tine Books.

Diary of a Wit­ness by Cather­ine Ryan Hyde. Knopf Dela­corte Dell.

slum­girl dream­ing, Rubina’s Jour­ney to the Stars by Rubina Ali. Ran­dom­house Teens.

(re)cycler by Lau­ren McLaugh­lin. Ran­dom House.

Ordered:
The Shadow Out of Time, H. P. Love­craft Dark Adven­ture Radio The­ater. DVD.
The Ister. DVD.
My New Mac, Snow Leop­ard Edition

My first review wasn’t much to write home about… I didn’t read the sub­mis­sion process instruc­tions care­fully enough, got in a slap­dash hurry to “post within 24 hours”, but hey… it’s been a while. One thing read­ers seem to expect from a book review is a sum­mary. Unfor­tu­nately, that ain’t in the cards when I write.

I’m in the midst of Cul­ture of Com­plaint, The Fray­ing of Amer­ica by Robert Hughes. Writ­ten in 1993, it’s even more true in 2009 than then. Amaz­ing insight but expected same from author of The Fatal Shore. Also picked up a copy of the Andy Warhol Diairies, edited by Pat Hack­ett while at the lit­tle lye­berry here in town. Last week’s visit to the Warhol Museum sparked an inter­est, albeit a rather shabby one.

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