elon musk book review

elon musk book review

The Importance of Book Reviews

1. Introduction

The purpose of this report is to address the following issues: the importance of book reviews for adult readers and the role of reviews in children’s literacy. In so doing, the intention is to convince a wider audience of the significance of the book review and to encourage the practice of reading amongst non-readers. At some points, the report will sound harsh, and readers may feel a tad guilty. As Roald Dahl so very wisely put it, “So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install, A lovely bookshelf on the wall.” This report should help to explain why people should conform with the above plea from one of the greatest children’s authors. Moreover, it will underline that reading is not just a ‘nerdy’ thing to do; through reading even newspapers or magazines, people are actively participating in an educational activity and are promoting literacy within society, which is a crucial issue today. Once these issues have been explored, each section holds a detailed analysis of how consumer satisfaction is translated from reading a book review to the purchase and understanding of a book. This has been outlined in a few questions at the end of the report, repeating other key issues in this investigation. Throughout this report, references are made to findings within a research project in which an email interview was conducted with a children’s book author about her opinion of children’s literacy and reviews of her books that help to provide a deeper insight into the issues.

2. Benefits of Book Reviews

Authors should be interested in book reviews for many reasons. If one writes a book, they are most likely doing it for either an increase in status and/or money. Writing is a time-consuming and difficult process. Reviewers can help the author by giving an accurate, fair, and thoughtful analysis, good or bad, on their work. Authors are in search of useful feedback for their work. The only way to truly improve as a writer is to learn from mistakes. If a reviewer points out a problem in the book and gives a suggestion on how to fix it, the author can go back to the writing board and make their book better with the advice for future readers. Bad reviews, although they may be disheartening, can be the most useful to an author for the same reason. If someone gives a book a poor rating and says it was too long and slow to develop, the author knows that they should work on pace while not sacrificing quality in their next book. Further, if a book receives a negative review and the author believes the reviewer is incorrect in their analysis, this can motivate the author to try even harder proving the reviewer wrong with their next work. Also, authors are always in search of free publicity for their work. The book ads of today can cost quite a bit and there is no guarantee that advertising will convert to sales. A review is a free ad, and although it may not always be positive, any publicity is good publicity and an author can simply use a quote from the review for an ad if they wish to stay away from the negative press. A review can also help with the branding of the author, as the reviewer not readers will likely target the author’s identity along with the characters and events in their book. Overall, book reviews can help an author sell and write a better book in the future.

2.1 Benefits to Authors

3. How to Write an Effective Book Review

Writing a good book review will: (1) point out strengths and weaknesses in the book; (2) look at what the book attempts to accomplish; and (3) be backed by evidence from the text. What makes a good proof? A good proof (i.e. evidence) comes in many forms. Statements like “I like this book” or “The book was boring” are statements that fail to answer questions like “why?” or “can you give examples?” A good proof is a statement that you can provide evidence for. Such evidence could be a brief summary of the text that would support your statement; a quick method to provide background evidence. If you claim that the book’s character development was poor, then you have to explain why you think so. Offering examples of where in the text the character development was poor and the characteristics that led you to that conclusion are evidence, not only that the characters were poorly developed, but also for your statement. An effective method to integrate this evidence into book reviews is to use concrete specific verbs and conceptual nouns. An example of this would be stating “Po uses artwork to explore changing the world and becoming a better person,” rather than the more generic “There was a lot of character development in Po.” Finally, a good book review is greatly bolstered by an evaluation of the author’s intent. It is difficult to evaluate how well something has been accomplished if you don’t know what was trying to be accomplished. This occurs a lot with readers who fail to distinguish between what they wanted the book to be and what the book was trying to be. In such cases, it is very possible that the author has written the book well, but it simply did not cater to the reader’s interests. Consider the time period and setting of the book and look for contextual clues in the text to what the author was trying to attempt. At times, this evaluation is on par with armchair reasoning and psychological diagnosis. But even if a reviewer misjudges the author’s intent, the act of trying to understand the book can bring much more depth to the reading.

4. The Impact of Book Reviews on Readers

Book reviews can be found in a variety of sources which can influence the students to seeking that book out and results he/she had on it. Newspapers, magazines, and journals are some examples of sources where book reviews can be found. The most popular of all being on the internet with the mass amounts of blogs that review, and even summarize them in the form of a book review. With blogs being predominantly free for anyone to read, this makes it both easy and convenient to finding book reviews done by other students on a book that would be required of them to read. At this point the student can simply cut and paste the comments and share the views another student had on the book, possibly even the same assignment given to him/her. However, it is a book review that has been written by a professional that is more likely to influence the student’s own for better or for worse. This is due to the fact that many famous books are reviewed more than once and there can be vast amounts of disparities on a single book among how it was received by different book critics. A student is unlikely to turn down an opportunity to gain a better understanding of their book and its underlying concepts. This would likely lead them to find different opinions on their book and may even result in them reading a book a second time. With emphasis often put on time and the increasingly rare second read of a book, it is clear to see the impact of book reviews on readers has quite a significant affect.

So where does the book review come in? Many students are not aware of the time and effort that goes into writing a good book review down to the actual construction of it. A book review is a thorough description, critical analysis, and evaluation of the quality, meaning, and significance of a book, often in relation to prior research on the topic.

Constructing a literature review of a book involves finding an appropriate book, reading the book, and writing your review of the book. What is the point of constructing a literature review? The main point of writing a literature review is to convey to the reader an overview of the literature written about a topic and to evaluate the sources you have found. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. The literature review allows you to convey to your readers the knowledge and ideas that have been established on a topic, and helps you to express whether your sources have found a solution to a problem, or a better understanding of it. The literature review also helps to build your credibility to the sources you used, in showing that they are accurate in understanding and stating the purpose of their research and has some good evidence to back up their claims.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, the purpose of a book review is to help other people decide whether or not they want to read it. Therefore, book reviews are necessary for people to make decisions about whether it is in their best interest to invest time and money into reading. Reviews guide the consumers whether to buy the book or not, or they should borrow it from a library or find it elsewhere. It alerts them if it is worth it. It is very often that consumers who are faced in making the decision to purchase a particular type of item come to the internet to conduct some research to see if it is really worth it. Book reviews also help determine if the book is suitable for the consumer. People of different ages may have different views on a specific book, so reviews help various age groups to understand if this is the type of book for them.