Author: William Thomas

“I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so”. These famous words of Sydney Smith clearly tell us a truth regarding books-that reviewing a book is no less significant a task than actually writing it out! In our fast moving world, leisurely reading of books is turning out to be an odd habit. People find it increasingly difficult to spare time for reading books. Even if one really manages to spare time, one is at a loss to decide which book is to read. If the choice proves to be a bad one, the whole time is wasted. There comes the role of reviews, which can function as trusted guides that will take you to books that you will really love to read. And if you are really short of time, they can still give you a good taste of the books without your reading them!

Book Review-What It Is

Hence, reviewing books is a serious job that requires special stills. It involves first hand reading of the book followed by a critical analysis of it, which then should be passed on to the readers in an easily palatable form.

Kinds of Book Review

There are basically two kinds of book reviews. The first is personal review. It is usually done by those great readers of books who are just not satisfied by reading the books; they want to comment upon them, and tell others about their find. They are more creative, but usually very subjective and biased. The second kind is academic or professional review. It is a more serious exercise, where the reviews are done in a very professional way, employing analytical skills, critical thinking and objectivity. In higher education, students are required to do reviews of this kind. In magazines and journals, professional writers provide this type of reviews, which are often fine critiques of the books. If you ever want to do a good book review, you should learn how to do such a serious, academic review.

How to Write An Academic Book Review

Writing an academic book review requires some hard work. Your effort should involve the following things:

1)      Read the Book:

It goes without saying. The first step towards reviewing a book is actually reading it from cover to cover. It should be an alert reading, capturing all the ideas the book can possibly convey.

2)      Understand Your Readers:

You should clearly understand the requirements and appreciating capacity of your forget readers, and frame your review accordingly.

3)      Summarize:

You should be able to provide a simple and clear summary of the book to the readers. They are primarily interested in this.

4)      Bring Out the Theme:

A good review should help readers understand the theme of the book even before they go on reading it. It will greatly help them.

5)      Provide Perspective:

It is probably the most important contribution a good book review can make. The reviewer should provide a critical analysis of the book, bringing out its main arguments and relating them to wider issues that may be of concern to the common reader. If you can take care of these elementary things, you should be able to do a really good book review.

Conclusion

Reviewing books is, in the last analysis, a literary exercise. Apart from knowing the how-to-do of it, one should have a taste for literature and also a good language in order to bring out quality reviews. Hence, before taking your first step towards writing a book review, stop a moment to ponder over these words of W.H.Auden: “One cannot review a bad book without showing off”!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/all-that-you-should-know-about-writing-a-book-review-1582686.html

About the Author:

William Thomas is one of the senior staff writers at essayacademia.com, specialized in dissertation writing for master and Ph.D. students. He has been with the company for over five years. He is one of the senior staff writers at essayacademia.com, specialized in dissertation writing for master and Ph.D. students. He has been with the company for over five years. EssayAcademia provides you with professionally prepared free draft for your dissertations. You need to place order for completed paper once you are satisfied with draft, for which you need to make no payment at all. To avail this unique service visit essayacademia now and place order for professionally prepared free draft

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Author: Brian Rodriguez

Being able to write a scholarly dissertation – this is a dream of every genuine aspirant to scholarship. But just as scholarship and erudition do not come easily to anybody, so is the mastery of this great academic craft. It requires great effort, constant practice and hard work to master the art of dissertation writing, apart from a sound knowledge of the technical know-how involved.

Dissertation – What It Is

The dictionary definition would tell you that a dissertation is a detailed discourse on a subject, especially one submitted for an academic degree or diploma. Any piece of scholarly writing will not pass for dissertation. It is a specialized form of academic writing. There are different forms and kinds of academic writing, like theses, research papers, term papers, seminar papers or articles written for academic journals. Among these, dissertation stands out as possibly the best representative of academic writing because it perfectly balances both the subject matter and the form.

How to Write

Since both content and form are equally important in writing a dissertation, one should be really meticulous in choosing the subject matter as well as the proper methodology of writing, before embarking upon the task of producing a scholarly dissertation. Only a meritorious topic, well researched and systematically and methodically documented will deserve to be called a proper dissertation. Hence, an aspirant should carefully follow the following steps in the process:

1.  Choose a Topic

The very first step towards writing a good dissertation is to identify an area for your research and frame a topic. A carefully selected topic will guarantee that half the work is already done.

2.  Develop a Thesis

Once the topic is selected, the next step is to pose a serious and relevant question for which you will be trying to find the right answer. This will be the central thesis of your dissertation.

3.  Collect Data

Now that your position is clearly defined, you need to take all the effort to establish it on firm grounds. An extensive research is to be undertaken for collecting all possible material in order to support your thesis. What is to be taken care of at this point is that the material should be collected from appropriate and authentic sources, like books, journals, magazines, newspapers or even personal interviews. In our time, internet has established itself as the most popular means of obtaining any kind of information.

4.  Read

Once the sources and material are ready at hand, one should start a careful reading of all of them. Reading is not a passive exercise of filtering the relevant information from the sources; it should be active reading, which will acquire knowledge and construct the right vision for the final writing.

5.  Develop the Argument.

An alert reading gives you all the information that you may need to establish your central claim. Now, you have to be a critical thinker, and judiciously frame your argument, by marshalling all possible facts, observations and claims as premises to provide support to your conclusion.

6.  Write It Out

The rest of the task is quite formal. Now that the whole thesis is ready to be produced, you should begin to actually write it out. Care should be taken to use appropriate language since it is an academic writing. Proper methodology is to be followed while writing the dissertation.

1. Acknowledge the Sources

The greatest challenge in writing a scholarly dissertation is regarding its authenticity. Your dissertation should never be a plagiarized version of some other piece of writing. Hence, one should take special care to acknowledge the sources where ever they are used. This will ensure the authenticity of one’s own dissertation. The sources shall be acknowledged by way of providing end notes and bibliography.

8.  Revise and Polish

There is no room for complacency even when the draft of the dissertation is ready. Good writing, they say, is rewriting. Hence you should revise and polish the draft in an objective and detached manner, by employing re-reading, rethinking, deleting irrelevant parts, making value additions, editing and so on, before you give the final shape to your dissertation.

Conclusion

As its Latin root suggests, the goal of a dissertation is ‘to discuss’ all the aspects of a particular topic and formulate a well balanced argument. If one can meticulously follow the different steps elaborated above, one can surely achieve the great dream of writing a scholarly dissertation.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/writing-scholarly-dissertations-master-the-craft-1582745.html

About the Author:

Brian Rodriguez is one of the senior staff writers at essayacademia.com, specialized in dissertation writing for master and Ph.D. students. He has been with the company for over five years.He is one of the senior staff writers at essayacademia.com, specialized in dissertation writing for master and Ph.D. students. He has been with the company for over five years. EssayAcademia provides you with professionally prepared free draft for your dissertations. You need to place order for completed paper once you are satisfied with draft, for which you need to make no payment at all. To avail this unique service visit essayacademia now and place order for professionally prepared free draft

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