Book review
A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit.[1] A book review can be a primary source opinion piece, summary review or scholarly review.[2] Books can be reviewed for printed periodicals, magazines and newspapers, as school work, or for book web sites on the Internet. A book review's length may vary from a single paragraph to a substantial essay. Such a review may evaluate the book on the basis of personal taste. Reviewers may use the occasion of a book review for a display of learning or to promulgate their own ideas on the topic of a fiction or non-fiction work.
There are a number of journals devoted to book reviews,[3] and reviews are indexed in databases such as Book Review Index and Kirkus Reviews; but many more book reviews can be found in newspaper databases as well as scholarly databases such as Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and discipline-specific databases.
See also
- Literary criticism
- Book review magazines
- The New York Review of Books
- London Review of Books
- Amazon.com controversies
- List of online book store
- Style guide
- The Wikiversity course on Writing a Book Review.
Literature
- Chen, C. C. (1976), Biomedical, Scientific and Technical Book Reviewing, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ.
- Ingram, H. & Mills, P. B. (1989), "Reviewing the book reviews", PS: Political science and Politics, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 627–634.
- Katz, Bill (1985–1986). The sunny book review. Technical Services Quarterly, 3(1/2), 17-25
- Lindholm-Romantschuk, Y. (1998). Scholarly book reviewing in the social sciences and humanities. The flow of ideas within and among disciplines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
- Miranda, E. O. (1996), "On book reviewing", Journal of Educational Thought, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 191–202.
- Motta-Roth, D. (1998), "Discourse analysis and academic book reviews: a study of text and disciplinary cultures", in Fortanet, I. (Ed), Genre Studies in English for Academic Purposes, Universitat Jaume, Castelló de la Plana, pp. 29–58.
- Nicolaisen, J. (2002a), "Structure-based interpretation of scholarly book reviews: a new research technique", Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, pp. 123–135. Available: https://web.archive.org/web/20050818220548/http://www.db.dk/jni/Articles/Abstract_Colis4.htm
- Nicolaisen, J. (2002b). The scholarliness of published peer reviews: A bibliometric study of book reviews in selected social science fields. Research Evaluation, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 129–140. Available: https://web.archive.org/web/20060215004706/http://www.db.dk/jni/Articles/Nicolaisen%282002c%29.pdf
- Nielsen, S. (2009), "Reviewing printed and electronic dictionaries: A theoretical and practical framework", in S. Nielsen/S. Tarp (eds.): Lexicography in the 21st Century. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins 2009, 23-41.
- Novick, Peter (1988). That noble dream. The "objectivity question" and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University
- Rampola, Mary Lynn (2010). "Critiques and book reviews", A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, Sixth Edition, pp26–28.
- Riley, L. E. & Spreitzer, E. A. (1970), "Book reviewing in the social sciences", The American Sociologist, Vol. 5 (November), pp. 358–363.
- Sabosik, P. E. (1988), "Scholarly reviewing and the role of Choice in the postpublication review process", Book Research Quarterly, Summer, pp. 10–18.
- Sarton, G. (1960), "Notes on the reviewing of learned books", Science, Vol. 131 (April 22.), pp. 1182–1187.
- Schubert, A. et al. (1984), "Quantitative analysis of a visible tip of the peer review iceberg: book reviews in chemistry", Scientometrics, Vol. 6 No. 6, pp. 433–443.
- Snizek, W. E. & Fuhrman, E. R. (1979), "Some factors affecting the evaluative content of book reviews in sociology", The American Sociologist, Vol. 14 (May), pp. 108–114.
- Spink, A., Robins, D. & Schamber, L. (1998), "Use of scholarly book reviews: implications for electronic publishing and scholarly communication", Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Vol. 49 No. 4, pp. 364–374.
- Zuccala, A. & van Leeuwen, T. (2011), "Book reviews in humanities research evaluations", Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 62 No. 10, pp. 1979–1991.
References
- ↑ Princeton (2011). "Book reviews". Scholarly definition document. Princeton. Retrieved September 22, 2011.
- ↑ Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (2011). "Book reviews". Scholarly definition document. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Retrieved September 22, 2011.
- ↑ See Book review magazines
External links
Wikiversity has learning materials about Writing a Book Review |
- Jane Ciabattari. "The Future of Book Reviews: Critics vs. Amazon Reviewers", The Daily Beast, May 12, 2011.
- Dalhousie University. How to write a book review
- Indiana University, Bloomington. Writing Book Reviews, April, 2004
- Los Angeles Valley College. How to write a book review, February, 2009.
- Purdue Online Writing Lab. Writing a book review, September, 2011.
- Queen's University, Stauffer Library. How to write book reviews, January, 2012.