A book review is an article that describes and evaluates a book.
Reviews are written for different purposes--to summarize, share an opinion, or evaluate a scholarly work--and will vary in terms of content and depth of evaluation. An overview is provided below:
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Characteristics
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Summary Reviews
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Opinion Reviews
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Scholarly Reviews
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Purpose
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Briefly summarize the content of the book.
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Give the article author's opinion about the book;
May include a brief summary of the book, discussion on writing style, audience level and the book author's area of expertise.
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Evaluate the issues and methods discussed in the book, rather than simply summarizing it.
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Author
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Librarians and professionals from the publishing industry.
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Magazine/newspaper contributors.
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Experts in the field being reviewed.
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Publication type
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Published in trade journals that are used to make purchasing decisions (ex. Publisher's Weekly).
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Published in newspapers, popular magazines and specialty journals (ex. New York Times Book Review).
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Published in book chapters or scholarly journals.
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Date of publication
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Often appear just before or soon after the publication of a book.
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Often appear soon after the publication of a book.
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Often appear months or years after the publication of a book.
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Length
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Short
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Short to moderate
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Moderate to long
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Since reviews are printed in many different kinds of publications, you may need to search several sources to be comprehensive.
Only a small number of books published each year are reviewed. If you are having trouble locating reviews for a particular book, it may not have been reviewed yet.
Search tips:
- Confirm the publication date. This will help you refine your search results.
- Ensure you have the exact title of the book and correct spelling of the author's name. Unlike Google, many of the library's databases do not autocorrect errors.
- Use quotation marks to search for the title of the book as a phrase (i.e. "The Hunger Games").
*Adapted from this guide provided by Virginia Tech University.