To write a good critique essay on a book, first read the book. Reading is an essential step. It reveals the writer’s style and enables the reader to follow the plot. Books that are collections of facts can be made exempt from this rule, but even when evaluating a Guinness Book of World Records or Ripley’s Believe It or Not, a critique needs to thumb through the volume and read an article here and there.
Critique Essay Writing
Introduce the book with a paragraph that will catch your reader’s attention. Explain the purpose of the book, or a little bit of the plot. If the book is fiction, try not to give away too much of the story – especially if it is a mystery or other suspenseful genre. Tell just enough of the plot so that readers will understand your points.
Evaluate the writer’s style. They might use simple language that is easy to understand, or use long, flowery sentences that make it difficult to find meaning. The book might be written in a way that emphasizes character development, or it could focus more on a lesson or speculation on what would happen if a particular activity or condition continues for a long time. Set the stage for understanding by making the reader aware of the time period when the book was written. Different historical periods had different literary expectations.
If you are at a loss as to how to describe the work, read one or two other critiques of the book in question. Pick out some important ideas used by those writers. You can include quotations from other sources but be sparing of them. Your critique essay should be primarily made up of your words and your reaction to the story.
Go through the book, and make some notes on a separate sheet of paper, or use sticky notes to mark important sections. Create an outline of what you want to say, then write a rough draft of your critique.
Separate out your various ideas in different paragraphs. This will help your reader follow the logic of your arguments. Your purpose, after all, is to recommend the book to readers or to warn them away from reading it. If you do a poor job of explaining your response, they are likely to seek a different opinion about the book in question.
Even if you disliked the book you critique, use examples from the text to show reasons for your response. For example, if you were criticizing a book by Jules Verne and you got tired of his habit of stopping to describe the scenery in the middle of an action scene, then you should give an example of a scene where the writer did this. By using examples, you make your critique essay stronger and give the reader a chance to form their own opinion.
Write a strong closing paragraph that is a call to action. Either recommend the book to the readers, or warn them against reading it. If it is a non-fiction volume, suggest uses for the content. If it is a work of fiction, make note of the age or other demographic description of people who would enjoy reading it. Use a memorable phrase, or even a quotation from the book as your closing. But don’t give away the ending – no one loves spoilers, not even when reading a critique.
Editing Your Essay
Use the spell checker and grammar checker to begin the editing process. When you have reached the limits of the tools in the word processor, paste the essay into a tool that will evaluate it. Such programs will identify words that are over-used, excessively long sentences, passive voice, and even words that sound a little bit pompous.
Examine the results of the checker, and look through your essay for the errors. An easy way to find them is to use the “find” tool that is part of most word processors. Enter the keyword or phrase the editor picks out as a problem, and let the program locate the word. Once there, you can read the sentence and see if there is a change you would like to make. Occasionally, the program will suggest a change that you do not want to make.
As you correct the grammar, spelling and punctuation, watch for incomplete ideas, arguments that are not complete and wandering logic. A book might deal with several themes, but you want to be sure that you are not losing your reader by mixing up the various threads of the plot or content. A good way to keep these separate is to use bullet points or to bold a concept at the beginning of a paragraph.