BOOKBANTER COLUMN: The Art of the Book Review Part I – How I Write a Book Review
I’ve been writing book reviews now for over ten years; 2014 will actually be my fifteenth year of writing reviews. I started in college, working for the student-run newspaper, and while my life has changed in many ways since 1999, and I’ve moved to a number of different places, two things have remained constant: I am continuously reading one or more books at a time, and when I’m done reading a book I will usually review it, no matter when it was released.
My website, BookBanter, now has over 600 book reviews, and as of April 13th, I posed my 650th review. I have had a number of my reviews quoted in books, and one even quoted on the cover – Amber Benson’s Cat’s Claw. So I like to think I know a thing or two about writing book reviews.
I’m sure if you scour the internet you’ll find a number of sites and documents and perhaps even treatises proclaiming how to write the ideal or perfect book review, and how there is a set form and format to it that cannot be diverged from, if one is seeking to create said “perfect book review.”
