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E. B. Strunksdotter (a pseudonym) works in the book reviewing profession.

Ed Battistella has asked me to tell you “ what makes a good book review.” My humble opinion on the matter follows.

• Accessibility/clarity–Jargon is the enemy of clarity. Brief reviews “cannot bear the weight of stylistic flourishes” (phrase stolen from another editor) . Reviewers should write as if for generalists. The following is unacceptable: “The intertextuality of the framing narrative objectively correlates with the synechdoche, the parataxeis being the vortex of the allegorical imagism (which is the doppelganger of metafiction).”

• Accuracy—If the review cites a person, a book, a chapter title–any “fact” whatsoever—that fact should be correct and accurately spelled, punctuated, and so forth. Which is to say—check it!

• Authority—Random opinions are irrelevant. The opinion should emanate from a verifiable expert on the subject.

• Brevity—Do not ramble [see elsewhere in this document].

• Comparisons—A critical review of 200 words can include citations of works that are comparable/complementary/superior/inferior/etc. This information is important to readers.

• Fair mindedness (as in lacking bias)—A reviewer should let us know if he/she is an arch enemy of the person who wrote the book he/she just received for review; has a viewpoint entirely antithetical to that of the book; is first cousin once removed of the author; etc. Any such circumstance smacks of conflict of interest (real or perceived). The reviewer is therefore disqualified.

• Focus—In reviewing a book on, say, Shakespeare, the reviewer should not digress and rattle on about, say, Elizabeth I’s ruffled collars (unless her ruffled collar is central to the book).

• Good grammar—Eschew passive voice! Do not dangle participles or misplace modifiers! Mind your collective nouns (sheep nibble grass/a flock nibbles)! Put periods and commas inside quotation marks! And so on.

• Opinion/evaluation—Without opinion, a review serves no better than the information on the publisher’s website or the jacket flaps. I don’t want synopsis; I want to know how valuable (and for whom) the reviewer thinks the book is. Should I buy/read it or should I give it a pass?

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From Michael Erard author of Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners, (Free Press, 2012) and Um…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean (Pantheon, 2007).

I think the best review is a profile of the writer, a profile of the reader, a profile of the genre or tradition the book fits in (or aspires to be in), and certainly not a full profile, but a substantive gesture in that direction. A situatedness.

The question that it’s getting at is, can you have a relationship with this book? There are many ways to get at that question. A good review is written by someone who’s read the book more than once; a bad review, on the other hand, is simply a report of how you feel after having consumed something. You don’t have a relationship with a meal (though you may have a relationship with a cuisine, a chef, a particular ingredient, or a restaurant) — or with most meals, anyway.

I find that a lot of reviews — both pro and amateur — don’t know what it means to have a relationship with a text, or how to talk about people who also have relationships with texts. They’re purely lip-smacking, plate-pushing. Yeah, get the fries, but the burger wasn’t worth it. But the reader of that review needs to know more about that reviewer: how many burgers have you eaten before? How hungry did you come? What were you expecting? Have you eaten here before? etc.

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From Kelli Stanley, an award-winning author of City of Dragons and City of Secrets and of The Curse-Maker and Nox Dormienda.

Good reviews should encapsulate the plot points without giving away spoilers … if the book has a surprise twist 3/4 of the way through, don’t reveal it, just allude to it.

As a reader, scholar, and author, I particularly appreciate reviews that admit their own subjectivity. Taste is a subjective thing–just because you don’t like, say, The Grapes of Wrath, does not mean that the book isn’t “good.” In fact, weak adjectives–“good”, “bad”, etc.–tell us nothing about a book, and are the hallmark of an amateur reviewer or worse–someone out for attention for themselves by slamming or extolling a given work.

If, as a reviewer, you are not versed in a particular sub-genre you’re reviewing–Gothic horror or steampunk or noir, for example–make sure you inform the reader. A dislike of the book may, in fact, be your dislike and/or ignorance of the subgenre showing. A good reviewer should reveal his or her gaps in taste and knowledge, and explain why they chose to review a book outside of their comfort zone.

Give us a bit of the critical history. Did it receive praise from well-regarded critics? Has it sold well? Did it win or was nominated for legitimate awards?

Plot, characterization, pace, tone and style should all be discussed or at least mentioned.

Spell the author’s name correctly! 😉

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From Alisa Bowman, author of Project: Happily Ever After, Dangerous Instincts, (with Mary Ellen O’Toole), and 30 other coauthored books including seven NY Times bestsellers.

In today’s online world, I think of book reviews differently than I did years ago. It used to be that people mostly bought books based on reviews in newspapers, trade journals (such as Publisher’s Weekly), magazines and book inserts like the NYT Book Review. While getting reviews in these outlets is still very important, they are harder and harder to come by. Professional reviews are shrinking. Some newspapers don’t do them at all. Others don’t include many pages for them. The New York Times Book Review only handles certain types of books. For instance it won’t review self -help books.

This used to be a sad and dismal situation, but the online world has started to change that. Now more and more amateur bloggers will review books, mostly because publishers like to give away free copies to their readers. And, of course, Amazon, Goodreads, BN.com and other sites include reader-driven reviews. These reader-driven reviews are probably just as important (if not more so) than professional ones. But they are also problematic.

1. People who have an axe to grind with an author will often go onto Amazon and leave one star reviews, even though they haven’t read the book. The best example is this one: Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story. Of course, who wants to read his book, right? But still, at least 100 of those reviews are from people who are reacting to the scandal, not the book. Amazon will not remove such reviews. I know many authors who have tried.

Another example of this is the review left by Ann Pace here:

Such reviews really are not helpful for readers since they are not about the book.

2. People who are friends with authors will leave glowing 5 star reviews of books they (a) have only skimmed (b) didn’t really love. These are loyalty reviews and, again, they don’t help readers. I can often sort them out because they saw “This book is awesome. I recommend it for everyone!” without offering any substance to back that up.

3. Real reviews written by real readers who are reacting to any number of things. I think, as a book buyer, all of these are helpful. It’s easy for me to tell when a reader is reacting negativity to something that I personally wouldn’t be bothered by. For instance I see many people leave reviews like “I liked this book, but I would have liked it more if it had a Christian perspective.” That usually tells me that I will love the book.

That was a lot of rambling. Take or leave any or all of that. As an avid reader and book lover, what I look for in a review are:

* A short description of the book, but one that doesn’t repeat the book jacket or publicity materials from the publisher.

* A personal reaction of how the reader/reviewer connected with the book. I want to know why the reader loved it or hated it.

* Adjectives that tell me what I can expect. Is it a fast read? Or are the first 100 pages slow? Is it high brow? Or dumbed down? Will I cry on my Kindle screen? Or laugh until I worry that other people are staring at me? Is it so provocative that I’ll find myself talking about it where ever I go? Will it offend me so much that I have to read it just so I can tell others why I hate it? Those are the sorts of things I want to know.

* An honest reaction to a flaw in the book. For instance, if I were reviewing Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (which is extremely funny in parts), the honest flaw would be that the chapters didn’t flow in chronological order. They also were not out of order for any logical reason. It seemed she had slapped some material from her blog into the middle of the book and hadn’t done the work to edit it to make sure the sequence would flow in order. That said, I didn’t find this disconcerting. As a reader, it was easy to follow her plot development.