Writing a Good Book Review -HINTS/TIPS

You have to write a good book review. It was just a matter of time before writing this. I had conceived this plan since the inception of our dear community, but my laziness has had the better of me. We all love books, that's why we write reviews and writing a book review is one of the ways of expressing your real feeling of a particular piece of literary work. A book review is almost as important as the book itself. Okay maybe no as important, xd.

I think like me, everyone else in the community enjoy reading good reviews. A good review is pivotal to the success of that work in the community. I could read a review and decide not to read a book or decide to read it, and it could be a simple reason as what the reviewer wrote. Writing a good book review takes time, effort, and a lot of research. I enjoy reading peoples review as I seldom write myself except for short stories so as to keep my brain spinning and the community buzzing, xd. So, I have searched the internet as well as inside my head and I have being able to conjure up a few tips to write even better reviews for ourselves and audience. Okay so here's the thing. These (writing a good book review) is very important for us as writers, readers, and Hive members. Why?

Sometime ago, I wrote a book review and shared it here. Then I shared it on twitter and tagged the author of the book. The author liked the tweet and I am pretty sure she checked the hive blog post. We attract more people to not only our work, but to our community and hive in general, so writing a good book review really is a win win for all and sundry. Enough rambling, lets get to it.

This is the most important tip of the list. I don't see any reason why you should write a book review without reading the actual thing. Don't read a summary and then start writing a review. People probably don't know this but one can see through a book review that is founded out of incomplete information. Well I can, lol. So before you start writing that review, read the whole work from page to page.

This is a deal breaker. It goes a long way to determine if people will read your piece or not. If you notice, whenever you share your post Peakd always adds the first few words the ellipsis. This is a very good market strategy. What this does is that it catches the potential readers attention so he or she wants to know more. This is something I myself have to work on.

If you truly want to ace that review, then you should try to research it. This gives you a well rounded idea of the books origin, history, popular acceptance, criticisms and even sometimes other reviews. The last short story I wrote about, Droozle by Frank Harbert took me over an hour to research. I couldn't find anything on the internet. It was frustrating really. So if you really want to write a good book review, you have to not only read it, but research everything you can about the book. Luckily, Google exist.

This is like you writing out the book again but in a shorter and more concise form, and if it is a work of fiction, telling the plot of the story. For other genres, its not a very difficult thing, but for fiction, you have to be very careful not to give spoilers. Okay wait, new heading.

I cannot emphasize this enough. If you give out the whole or important information, you kill of a potential readers interest. Here is what I learned to do. I "avoid spoilers but retain suspense". Its like building up to a very interesting part of the book, the you stop. If you are going to put in spoilers at least give closure. It is literally one of the rules of the community, xd.

When reading through it, you can decide to take notes of the parts of the book you liked. Quotes, ideas, etc. Now you're really doing this so as to have what to write about in your review, no just write randomly.

Chances are that there was a part of the book that didn't resonate with you at all. this part is important because it doesn't just seem like you're a mindless zombie that would swallow everything thrown at him. When you think for yourself, you realize there where some parts that was really uninteresting to you. Well except you're reading a MARK MANSON or AUSTIN KLEON or DAN BROWN, or any other great author.

This helps give you more ideas to talk about. Basically, take note as you read. Now there are some strange parts of the books, and by strange it could be that the scene was illogical, or you didn't understand it, or that the writer derailed for a second, etc. The bullet points you must have written would help you analyze more intricate themes of the book.

The last but definitely not the least. I don't think you have written a book review if you don't rate it, or at least recommend it. I mean, that is exactly why we read the reviews, so we get new additions to our reading list. When rating it, you have to be as objective as you can. Do not attack the author, but rate the work in it self and provide feedback and how it can be better not why it is bad. Give recommendation of who the work his for, you know, like the target audience. The genre of the book, etc.