Writing reviews is a powerful method for processing the material you are reading and developing your understanding of the text. Often, teachers or lecturers give assignments to make reviews for their students so that it helps them to understand the material being read, build solid and relevant opinions, and manage thoughts that arise before doing a larger assignment. To write a book review, several important steps that you must do are try to deepen the text you are reading, and combine the thoughts that arise to reach a comprehensive argument. By practicing your reading and writing habits, writing a detailed review or essay will no longer be as difficult as moving mountains!
Step
Part 1 of 3: Writing a Review
Step 1. Summarize the books you read
The first half of your review should contain a summary of the story, analysis of the book, and the main elements the author wants to highlight. Make sure your summary is not verbose but comprehensive; at the very least, make sure you are able to create a short essay or review based on that summary.
- Describe the author's main thesis. What is the book about? And what is the author's reason for making it?
- Explain each conclusion, comment, and argument made by the author. If the author recounts the social and political conditions at the time the book was written, what would the author think and why do you assume so?
- Include one or two important quotes that represent the entire text.
Step 2. Share your comments regarding the contents of the book
As previously explained, the first half of the review should contain a summary, analysis, and explanation of the main elements highlighted by the author; the rest should contain your personal comments regarding the contents of the book. In other words, the second part of the review should contain your subjective opinion, as well as any arguments or conclusions that come to your mind as a reader. If the summary focuses on the question word "what," your personal comment should focus on the question word "why."
- Don't be afraid to relate the contents of the book to your personal life; if there is a theme or character that feels relevant to your life, explain why you feel that way.
- Present and evaluate the arguments and conclusions made by the author; You should have explained the author's argument in detail in the summary section.
- Make comments that support or reject (what you think are) the author's main argument.
- Express your opinion in the comments section. Confessing to agree or disagree is the first step; Next, you need to analyze your personal opinion and provide a detailed explanation of the reasons behind the emergence of that opinion.
Step 3. Develop your idea
One of the purposes of writing a book review is to provide a private space for you to reflect on the content of the text and develop your thoughts and opinions. There's no need to force yourself to understand everything in the first place; anyway as time goes by, your review will help you understand it.
- Allow yourself to explore the topics covered in the summary. Think about why you feel the author is discussing a certain subject; Also think about what you think about the subject and how the author describes it in writing.
- Analyze your opinion. Don't just share your opinion (agree or disagree, like or dislike), but try to dig deeper into the opinion to understand the reasons behind it.
- Ask yourself: To what extent can I explore the idea, and how does it sound logical? Think of your review as a place to make sense of your academic and personal experiences after reading the book.
- As the review writing process progresses, your responses should become longer and more complex.
- Keep track of the progress of your thoughts by referring to each individual response that comes up as well as the body of your review as a whole.
Step 4. Manage your responses
Make sure you include the date the response was written; make sure you also add a title and footnote to identify each response more easily. Remember, one of the purposes of managing review responses is to observe how your understanding of the book you are reading is progressing.
- Consider using clear and descriptive footnotes. Believe me, you will be more helpful to understand every opinion and thought written by applying this method.
- Feel free to spend more time exploring the subject even if it seems to override the actual review process. Trust me, doing so is effective in making the results of your review more detailed and thorough. Remember, your main goal is to compile a comprehensive journal so that you can track the progress of your understanding of the book you are reading.
Part 2 of 3: Deep in the Text
Step 1. Read the text as critically as possible
To make a critical analysis of a text, you need to read the text more than once. During the first reading process, absorb the main ideas that arise. If you have time to do a second reading, try again to understand the ideas and concepts in more depth. Ultimately, critically reading texts requires you to think about what you are actually reading and engage more deeply with the text.
- Try to build a general understanding of the text before starting to read it. To do this, you could try reading the summary of the story, quickly scanning the contents of each chapter, or reading other readers' reviews of the text.
- Try to build context based on the cultural, biographical, and historical elements contained in the text.
- Ask questions about the text you read. Don't just read the text in passive mode; make sure you also analyze every word listed and try to 'debate' the author's thoughts.
- Be careful when delivering personal responses. What shapes your understanding and what are the similarities or differences between your understanding and the author's understanding?
- Try to identify the main thesis of the text and analyze its development throughout the text.
Step 2. Annotate the text
Writing notes on the side of the text is called the text annotation process. In the text annotation process, you are asked to write down any thoughts, impressions, reactions and questions that arise regarding the annotated text.
- Your annotations don't have to be perfect. Basically, annotations can also be incomplete thoughts or impressions, or even exclamations of surprise.
- Some critical readers annotate the text to clarify things that are still considered vague. Meanwhile, there are also readers who annotate the text to assess and evaluate the author's arguments.
- Try different annotations so that your review can cover different approaches.
Step 3. Reread your annotation several times
After completing the process of reading and annotating the text, take some time to read your notes. Annotations, in essence, are important notes to yourself as a reader. For that, re-read your notes and try to process any thoughts that come up before starting to write a review.
Read your annotations many times carefully, at least a few days to a few weeks afterward
Step 4. Re-evaluate your notes, both self-made and those you have included in the review
After critically reading the text, annotating, and doing the freewriting process, you should have enough information to write a review. Evaluating your notes will help you find important and relevant information to include in the journal.
- Put an asterisk or symbol next to 10 notes, comments, or sentences that you think are important and relevant.
- Underline or add a second star next to the 5 notes, comments, or sentences that you think are most important; choose a sentence that you think can help the reader understand the plot, or an argument that you think can support the content of the review.
Part 3 of 3: Putting Your Mind Together to Write a Review
Step 1. Try making a mind map
Creating a powerful mind map or story map helps you recognize story patterns, clarify relationships between characters, and understand the plot more thoroughly. Most likely, the critical reader will not feel the need to do this step; however, doing so will be of great help to those who are not used to making reviews.
- One type of mind map is a web story. Generally, web stories are structured by placing the main topic or question in the middle, then surrounding it with a dialog box or balloon containing various arguments, rebuttals, and comments related to the main topic or question.
- Another type of mind map is a story map. Generally, story maps are structured like a chart; the top box in the chart contains the main plot which is then followed by small boxes containing 5W+1H descriptions of the contents of the book in a visual format.
Step 2. Go through the free writing process
If you're having trouble getting started with the review process, try freewriting first. Freewriting is an informal and unstructured process that gives you the opportunity to ramble aimlessly about the text you are reading. Free writing also helps you explore any thoughts that come up; As a result, more ideas for starting reviews will emerge.
Try not to transfer all the words in your freewriting results into reviews. Instead, take a few key ideas and phrases and try to develop them into paragraphs in your book review
Step 3. Consider writing a review outline first
If you're having trouble getting started with the review process, try outlining it first. Within that outline, write down all your responses and reactions to reading the various elements in the book. For example, you could write "In chapter 2, I understood that _," or "I felt _." Analogize the process of writing a review outline as a bridge between freewriting and compiling an actual review.
- The freewriting process is powerful in helping you understand the summary of the story; meanwhile, the process of creating a powerful review outline helps you provide relevant responses to the text you read.
- Try not to limit yourself when you outline your review. In other words, get out all the thoughts and opinions you had while reading the text and try to come up with a logical conclusion from those thoughts.
Tips
- Believe me, you will not be able to understand the content of the text if you go straight through tens of chapters without pausing. Instead, try reading a chapter first, then making a brief review of what the chapter contains.
- Write your review in a quiet environment free from electronic distractions.
- Use sticky notes and/or highlighter to mark important sentences.
- If your teacher gives specific conditions or instructions regarding a review to make, make sure you follow them.
