Rachna Contractor is Associate Editor – Reviews for Plenitude Magazine, and has written about literature, art and culture for Xtra and Kala Magazine as well. She earned her BA in Art History from the University of Toronto. After a decade of working in communications, Rachna has moved to the culinary arts sector.
Rachna gave the guest talk – and co-hosted, and co-edited this blog! – at our July 2016 event (Queer Night!), and here provides eight tips for writing a thorough book review.
Eight Tips for Writing a Thorough Book Review
1) Use accessible language and keep it succinct: 700–1,000 words isn’t a lot with all that needs to be covered. Stay away from academic or conversational language.
2) Structure your review well:
a. The first paragraph should be an introduction of the book including the author’s name and title in the first two lines;
b. Ensure the review flows well by presenting information in an organized manner, separating points by paragraph;
c. Conclude with your general impression of the book.
3) Talk about the characters: do they read well, are they well developed, are they relatable, likeable, do you believe in them and their stories?
4) Talk about the use of language, grammar, and punctuation–especially if the way they are employed stands out.
5) What is your opinion of the book? How does it make you feel? Include this throughout: by the end of the review, the reader should have a general impression of how the reviewer feels about the book.
6) Sometimes it’s hard to be critical of a work because you want to support it. We want all of our published stories to do well, but it’s okay to not like a book and critique it. It’s also okay to see how it may be valuable, if not to you then to the literary world and the community.
7) Stick to the work at hand. Don’t include what others are saying about the book.
8) Read a lot of books. I don’t read book reviews but I stay abreast of what’s happening in the literary community.
Check back after our September event for more tips from our next guest speaker. See you again soon at full of beans Coffee House & Roastery, 1348 Dundas St. W., Toronto!
Gwen Benaway is of Anishinaabe and Métis descent. Her first collection of poetry, Ceremonies for the Dead, was published in 2013, and her second, Passage, is forthcoming from Kegedonce Press in Fall 2016. As an emerging Two-Spirited poet, she has been described as the spiritual love child of Thompson Highway and Truman Capote. In 2015, she was the recipient of the inaugural Speaker’s Award for a Young Author from the Speaker of the House for the Ontario Legislative. Her work has been published and anthologized internationally.
Matthew R. Loney is the author of That Savage Water (Exile Editions, 2014), a collection of backpacker-themed short fiction. He was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Vanderbilt/Exile Short Fiction Award and his work has appeared in a range of North American publications, including installments Three and Four of the Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Anthology Series and the short fiction anthology, Everything Is So Political. He lives in Toronto.
Yaya Yao is an educator, writer, and editor born and raised in Little Portugal. She is the author of a collection of poetry, Flesh, Tongue, and a resource book for teachers, The Educator’s Equity Companion Guide. Yaya lives with her family in Sapporo, Japan, where she teaches middle school.
Toronto. 
uent jokes with affecting poems from her debut collection, published by Mawenzi House, including the particularly moving “For My High School Sweetheart”, an elegy for not just a person but Yaya’s gentrifying childhood neighbourhood – Bathurst & Dundas, in Toronto – that beautifully evokes young women writing poems to each other and “learning to inhale at midnight” in Alexandra Park. Other highlights included several poems focusing on language, and on a common experience for children of immigrants: the almost mandatory “roots visit” to the country of parents’ origin. She prefaced “Moving Time” with remarks on expressing oneself differently depending on the language one is using, and followed up with poems from a series called “Cantonese Lessons”, complete with a hearty call and response section, from which this attendee walked away with a better grasp of how to swear in a new language.
Brockton Writers Series 