What makes a ‘good’ book review?

My blog started out as a series of posts of my book reviews and despite dabbling in one or two other types of content it remains primarily a review site. English (especially literature) wasn’t something I chose to pursue as a subject at school or later so beyond the odd exercise to write about a book in my teens I’ve never been taught how this should be done. When it comes to writing a review I know that I don’t necessarily have the right terms of reference or terminology to summarise some of the aspects of what I’ve read or perhaps even the knowledge to identify specific features. You can probably tell this from my earliest posts, I’d like to think that over time I’ve got better, or at least have more of a clue about what I’m doing. But I’m not sure that I’ve grasped it completely yet. Does it matter as long as I’m posting about the books?

A review in The London Review of Books could be 2,500 words long and in a newspaper or magazine it might be 500 or even down to just a series of short quotes. Until I ended up particularly behind with my reviews this year I’ve tended to find 500 words is about right but have been trying to write shorter reviews in order to catch up (and perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing) but obviously length isn’t necessarily a sign that a review is better or more comprehensive just because it’s longer.

I often see people sharing reviews on twitter or facebook as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ but, in general, these seem to be ‘positive’ rather than incisive reviews. So what does a good review mean to you? Whose reviews do you admire and why? I’d really like to know other blogger’s/reviewer’s thoughts.

 

 

Coincidence …?

I’m in the midst of writing a review for a book in which I’ve said ‘the premise is an unusual one’ and when I started the review this was true, however it shares a lot in common with my current read. The books were published within weeks of each other and I’m in no way suggesting that there is any connection, copying, collusion or anything in any way underhand – it’s just pure coincidence. And I’ve noticed how frequently this seems to happen. Through a purely random choice of what to read next I’ve often spotted surprising coincidences from the small, such as two books using the same unremarkable US location, to a more fundamental plot device.

Synchronicity, coincidence? Has this happened in your reading? And can you figure out the two books I’m referring to at the beginning of my post (if it helps they were both published in 2013).