A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is merely described (summary review) or analyzed based on content, style, and merit.[1]
A book review may be a primary source, an opinion piece, a summary review, or a scholarly view.[2] Books can be reviewed for printed periodicals, magazines, and newspapers, as school work, or for book websites 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 based on personal taste. Reviewers may use the occasion of a book review for an extended essay that can be closely or loosely related to the subject of the book, or to promulgate their ideas on the topic of a fiction or non-fiction work.
Some journals are devoted to book reviews, and reviews are indexed in databases such as the Book Review Index and Kirkus Reviews; but many more book reviews can be found in newspaper and scholarly databases such as Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index , and dscipline-specific databases.
History
Photios I of Constantinople has been called "the inventor of the book review" for his work, Bibliotheca.[3]
Types of reviews
Academic reviews
Academic reviews are both a form of academic service and a contribution to the academic literature.[4] They are frequently published as a section or part of academic journals.[5] They help the profession understand what has been happening in their profession, and work on the emerging intellectual challenges of their field.[4] However, not all academics are incentivized to take on the work required in a book review, because they are often not rewarded for that work.[4] Book reviews can be used to predict which monographs are likely to have subsequent citations.[5]
Newspaper and magazine reviews
Newspaper reviews became prominent in the 18h century, as a form of reader responses.[6]
In academic criticism, popular book reviews in newspapers and magazine reviews are often used to evaluate the relative audience and impact of books during a period.[7]
See also
References
Further reading
- Chen, C. C. (1976), Biomedical, Scientific and Technical Book Reviewing, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ.
- Ingram, Helen M.; Mills, Penny B. (1989). "Reviewing the Book Reviews". PS: Political Science and Politics. 22 (3): 627. doi:10.2307/419632. JSTOR 419632.
- Katz, Bill (1985). "The Sunny Book Review". Technical Services Quarterly. 3 (1–2): 17–25. doi:10.1300/J124v03n01_03.
- 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. Archived from the original on Aug 18, 2005.
- Nicolaisen, Jeppe (2002). "The scholarliness of published peer reviews: A bibliometric study of book reviews in selected social science fields". Research Evaluation. 11 (3): 129–140. doi:10.3152/147154402781776808.
- Nielsen, Sandro (2009). "2. Reviewing printed and electronic dictionaries: A theoretical and practical framework". Lexicography in the 21st Century. Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice. Vol. 12. pp. 23–41. doi:10.1075/tlrp.12.04nie. ISBN 978-90-272-2336-4.
- Novick, Peter (1988). That Noble Dream. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511816345. ISBN 9780521357456. S2CID 158050677.
- Rampola, Mary Lynn (2010). "Critiques and book reviews", A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, Sixth Edition, pp. 26–28.
- Riley, L. E. & Spreitzer, E. A. (1970), "Book reviewing in the social sciences", The American Sociologist, Vol. 5 (November), pp. 358–363.
- Sabosik, Patricia E. (1988). "Scholarly reviewing and the role of choice in the postpublication review process". Book Research Quarterly. 4 (2): 10–18. doi:10.1007/BF02910823. S2CID 144380238.
- Sarton, G. (1960). "Notes on the Reviewing of Learned Books". Science. 131 (3408): 1182–1187. Bibcode:1960Sci...131.1182S. doi:10.1126/science.131.3408.1182. PMID 17773924.
- Schubert, A.; Zsindely, S.; Telcs, A.; Braun, T. (1984). "Quantitative analysis of a visible tip of the peer review iceberg: Book reviews in chemistry". Scientometrics. 6 (6): 433–443. doi:10.1007/BF02025830. S2CID 32648183.
- 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, Amanda; Robins, David; Schamber, Linda (1998). "Use of scholarly book reviews: Implications for electronic publishing and scholarly communication". Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 49 (4): 364–374. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(19980401)49:4<364::AID-ASI6>3.0.CO;2-3.
- Zuccala, Alesia; Van Leeuwen, Thed (2011). "Book reviews in humanities research evaluations". Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 62 (10): 1979–1991. doi:10.1002/asi.21588. hdl:1887/17652. S2CID 33669460.
External links
Quotations related to Book review at Wikiquote- "Book reviews" at The Writing Center - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
