Benefits of Book Reviewing English Majors Will Love
If you can discuss the pros and cons of your favorite book and describe in detail why the main character is someone your friends will relate you, then youhave the makings of becoming a book reviewer. Writing book reviews can prove beneficial for high school students and many college majors, especially english, journalism,communications, marketing, and even advertising! Here’s how:
Your reading, writing, and thinking skills will improve. Once you write your first book review, you may be tempted to continue. Like any skill, practice is the best way to refine it. By constantly reading youwill finish books faster and understand the characters more deeply than before. Your newfound ability to read a book from a purely objective standpointwill help you develop carefully crafted reviews that other reviewers, and authors, will want to read.
By critiquing others, you can look for strengths and weaknesses in your own work. If you want to know what will make your personal writing better, simply look to your reviews of other works. What do you like most about a certain writingstyle? What do you look for in a good plot? These types of questions will help you assess your own writing, and if you want an outsider’s opinion, readother reviewers thoughts to find out what the general audience looks for in a good written piece.
You will cultivate a digital presence. You may find you really enjoy reviewing books and want to start a blog. Or, you might become one of the top reviewers online. Either way, constantlycontributing your ideas will help you develop familiarity with the blogosphere, or popular forums where people look to you to guide them to their nextgreat book! This is a great way to hone your skills and develop your own unique voice to use in college and beyond.
You will discover authors and styles you didn’t know previously.Once you get used to reviewing a certain genre, try branching out with something new. By assessing different writing styles, genres, and sub-genres, youcan draw inspiration from many areas for your own personal writing and discover a new favorite author!
Network with other reviewers and build relationships with authors. New authors are always looking for gifted reviewers to help them spread the word about their books. If you provide concise, thoughtful, and objectiveexaminations of works that make other reviewers and authors notice you, this could be a great way to network for your future career.
Ready to get started with your first review? Check out these great references and sample reviews:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/704/01/
http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/bookrev/
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/books/bookreviews/index.html