Scholar 1 asks Scholar 2, "Well, have you read so-and-so's book yet?" Scholar 2 replies, "Read it? I haven't even reviewed it yet!" While this is funny, sadly it is not uncommon to read a book review by someone who has merely skimmed a book's contents and writes without understanding what the author is really doing. Then the reviewer critiques the book because he or she thinks something is missing that they would have read if they had actually read the book.
Instead, slowly and carefully read the book, taking notes or putting sticky notes, page flags, or something similar at important spots. This will enable you to go back to what you think is most important. You cannot do this well if you only read the table of contents and the back cover and skimmed the book. You actually have to read it to review it ethically and accurately. If this is for a class, you do not want your professor to ask, "Did you really read this, because that is not what the author says?"
If you think you need help in reading and understanding an entire book, you may find Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book helpful.
1. Give the bibliographic information in the format of a book review. This usually includes the author, title, (publisher location: publisher name, year published, number of pages, ISBN, and in some cases, the retail price.
2. Identify what the book is. For a book on one topic by one person (a monograph), this is not necessary but it is relevant if the book is a revised doctoral dissertation or a collection of papers read at a conference, or other book with an editor and chapters by different people. Sometimes, a review will begin by identifying the author, e.g., "John Smith is a professor of Church history at Some Seminary," but this is not a regular feature of a review.
3. State the purpose of the book. The author generally tells you the purpose in a preface or introduction at the start of the book. Decide when to quote the book. This can be good but it should not be frequent.
4. What is the author's thesis? Unless this is a memoir, autobiography, or similar thing, the author is arguing for something. What is it? This is also usually at or near the beginning of the book or perhaps on the back of the book cover.
5. If the author provides a description of his or her method or approach, what is it? Describe it in the first paragraph of the review.
6. Look at the table of contents to get an idea of the topics to be covered. You might start with a paragraph for each chapter, even if you make multiple paragraphs into a single paragraph later. If the book contains several essays by different authors, you might not be able to address all of them,. In that case, you might not have a paragraph for each essay but instead focus on what seems to be the most significant chapters. That is a personal judgment.
Now it is time to look at those sticky notes, page flags, or highlighting that you did to remind you of important pieces in each chapter. Assume that you followed the suggestion to have one paragraph per chapter.
1. Go to the paragraph for a chapter and write about the purposes, goal, and conclusion of the chapters. At this point, feel free to add to your review interesting or important elements from each chapter.
2. Do you see issues with the argument of the chapter? It is appropriate to note errors in logic, such as circular reasoning, special pleading, or assuming something needs to be proven. Here is a real example. An author in an article that sought to interpret Ephesians 5:5-6 asserted that these verses could not apply to a Christian because of eternal security: since the author never demonstrated the validity of the doctrine of eternal security, and it is a debated concept, the author assumed something that needed to be proved.
One technique is to ask questions, e.g., "How does the author know this?"
3. Add your overall evaluation.
4. Add any recommendations such as who would benefit from this book.
A review is not a research paper. If you wish to refer to a specific page, such as identifying where a direct quote came from in the book, do not use a footnote. Instead, at the end of the sentence, list the page inside parentheses, e.g.,
The author says that, "The land of Canaan is subject to frequent droughts" (p.32).
The reason footnotes are not needed is that you have already given the book information at the start of the review and everyone assumes that you are continuing to talk about that book.