Book Reviews: How I Write Them

In my last blogpost, I talked about how a book review accomplishes several things in academia. It often

·      assesses how a work contributes to the field,

·      helps make people aware of the work, and

·      creates opportunities for reviewers to (a) meet editors, (b) get their own names published as authors, and (c) stay current in their field.

So, with those benefits in mind, how does one write a book review? Here are some things that I do when I sit down to write a book review. Putting on my writing coach hat, I hope you find my transparency about my process helpful.

Follow any instructions and meet any deadlines from the book reviews editor: Every journal has a style guide that all manuscripts submitted for publication need to follow. This style guide is often housed on the journal’s website, or the book reviews editor sends the style guide to reviewers along with any necessary paperwork and special instructions—which usually includes a strict word limit.

It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: I read and then follow these instructions to show that I pay attention to details and respect the time of the book reviews editor (who is always a volunteer!). Additionally, I read, sign, and send any necessary paperwork (like copyright transfer) by the deadlines set by the book reviews editor.

Read book reviews of similar works in the journal that I am reviewing for: Before I write a book review for a new-to-me journal, I download and read a few recent book reviews published in that journal. I not only want to see how reviewers angle the book under review for the journal’s readers, but I also pay attention to how authors structure those reviews. Are there different structures for an anthology versus for a monograph? What are some of the different ways that authors order their review? I will reverse-outline how other authors structure their reviews to create templates for myself so that I’m not re-inventing the wheel each time I write a review. I now have several different book review structures that I like to choose from when I write a new book review.

Consider my audience: The audience for a book review is the journal’s primary readership. All the books I have reviewed concern music in South Asia—books I will read anyway because of my own research and professional interests. While the title is usually enough to sell me on the book (A book titled Singing Goddesses of the Himalayas? I was sold at “singing” and “Himalayas”!), not everyone is studying or interested in music in South Asia. How do I pitch such a work to a music librarian? An ethnomusicologist who focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa? An anthropologist or sociologist who studies labor relations in South Asia? My job as a reviewer is to pitch the work to the journal’s primary readership. Pitching a work to the readership of a profession’s journal (like the Music Library Association) is different than pitching to a discipline’s journal (like Ethnomusicology) or an area studies journal (like Himalaya or Pacific Affairs). All these different audiences have different priorities, and so I want to highlight aspects of the book that speak to the needs of the target audience.  

Read and think about the book: All the book reviews editors with whom I have worked have given me three to six months to write my review. I will take the time to read the book through once cover-to-cover. I try to balance enjoying it as a book and asking critical questions of it. Using the index, I then re-read sections to answer any questions that came up as I read. Needless to say, my initial drafts of a review are incredibly messy and consist more of notes and jottings than full thoughts. My book review’s argument takes shape as I think deeply about the work.  

Highlight the book’s contributions, per the audience of my review: Good scholars will explain the significance of their work and how it contributes to a discipline or area of knowledge. However, that is not necessarily the (only) contribution that I talk about within a book review.  For purposes of a review, a book’s significance depends on the audience. Sometimes, I place the work in relation to other works to demonstrate the theoretical gap that it fills as well as show how it relates to similar works familiar to the audience. I often talk about the scholar’s research methods or theoretical frameworks as those often interest readers from a wide variety of disciplines. I also often talk about which university courses the book could be assigned to. For purposes of a book review, contributions and significance means identifying aspects of the book that a journal’s specific readership will find worthwhile.

Identify what could have been done better: My job as a book reviewer is not to pull the author’s argument to pieces—in fact, if I can’t write a positive review of the work, then the book reviews editor will want to know so that they can pass the book on to someone else who can be more collegial—but there are always things that an author could have done better. Sometimes it can be as simple as wishing for a glossary of foreign terms used in the book or commenting on abrupt transitions between sections of a work.

Recently, I was coaching a doctoral student in higher education who was reviewing a sociology monograph for an education journal. In her book review, she included a “warning” for other higher ed administrators that they would encounter a lot of sociological jargon in the work, but it was still worth reading for the insights it contained on the family experiences of incoming first-year students. I thought her “warning” was a nice way of framing the fact that the authors may have had too narrow an audience in mind (only sociologists) and should have thought more broadly about who would be reading their work. In this way, this doctoral student both highlighted the value of the book for the journal’s readers as well as critiqued the book authors in a collegial way.

Allow myself time for feedback: Because I work in writing centers, I usually schedule appointments for my own work to go over my writing with a fellow coach. At other times, I have swapped writing with a colleague. But sometimes, scheduling feedback from someone isn’t feasible, so then I do some of the following to work more closely with my review:  

• Lay my work aside for a few days and come back to it and look at it with fresh eyes: It is amazing how this simple technique allows me to see things that I missed earlier!

• Read the work aloud: I will usually read my writing aloud to myself; that way, I can hear if I used the wrong form of a word (I needed ‘writing’ instead of ‘write’), or if I missed small words (like articles and prepositions—I’m surprised how often my brain passes over those small but important words as I type!) 

• Read it like a reader: For example, I might read it as if I’m a librarian who is looking for additional titles on music in South Asia to add to the university library but that would also be of interest to the burgeoning women’s studies program on campus. Or, I pretend to be that ethnomusicologist who works in Sub-Saharan Africa but is teaching a world music class and looking for titles on South Asia they could assign as reading or use as a resource for their own lectures. Attempting to read my work from someone else’s perspective often helps me gauge whether or not I’ve written a review appropriate for my target audience.

• Target edit: I notoriously overuse ‘there is’ or ‘there are,’ so many of my sentences sound redundant; I use ‘this’ or ‘these’ as pronouns, so several of my sentences are ambiguous, and I default to passive voice when active voice would usually serve my purposes better. So, I use Microsoft Word’s “find all” feature to highlight all these instances in my book review. I then revise them as needed. I have found that editing for specific errors (or bad writing choices that I know I make) is so much more productive than just reading through the work looking for generic mistakes.

Overall, I make sure that I have fun with the process. Writing book reviews certainly can have their tedious or frustrating moments, but I find that book reviews are good opportunities to exercise creative critical thinking and help a work find new readers.