reading Archives

On writing book reviews

September 12, 2012

Having asked the question about how to progress my writing of book reviews for the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge 2012, here are a few gems on writing book reviews, with suggestions on techniques including what to do if you don’t actually like the book (always awkward):

As if immediately answering my question, Annabel Smith pops up on the AWW blog with a post on ‘What makes a good book review?’ I suppose with over 1000 reviews now under its belt, this question was bound to arise in the context of the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge. Annabel’s advice includes remembering that a review is an evaluation not a summary, it’s personal, and however you feel about the book, your argument should be supported by evidence. She includes some great questions to inspire your writing of reviews or just to keep your review on track.

In ‘Ten ways to write a book review and what to do when the book sucks’, Emlyn Chand provides some tips on traversing this genre. She is not afraid of a synopsis, as long as it doesn’t give things away. Most importantly for me, Emlyn talks about hitting your stride and finding your uniqueness with reviewing. I think this is what I was alluding to in my last post: trying to find a unique path between literary criticism and other genres in reviewing. Perhaps it’s not another genre; just a matter of being yourself and finding your place and voice. Perhaps, as with most things, it’s about practice

What to do if you don’t like the book? Emlyn touches on it; in ‘How to write a good bad book review‘, Tori rips right into what to do if you don’t really like the book you are reviewing. There are lots of excellent practical suggestions for managing this situation including: being specific (similar to being evidence based); keeping it ‘between the pages’ and not being personal about the author; and writing in such a way, that however you feel, you know you can ‘own it’ ie the review and any response.

So some valuable tips and taking my own advice, it’s about practise, and a practice I’d best get on to instead of putting it off. I promise: the book reviews are coming soon!

PS Absolutely loving ‘The Engagement’ by Australian writer, Chloe Hooper – thrilling read!

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Managing your online reading

May 1, 2011

You are reading more online and finding so many fascinating sites that you connect with. They are stimulating your writing and you want to be able to manage them more efficiently and to be able to find them again later.

But how do you keep up with reading all the blogs that connect with your interests? How do you find what is of value to you? How do you arrange it so it’s manageable? How do you maximise your learning from the huge volume of material? How do you not miss out on the key people whose work you love amidst the volume coming at you?

In short, what RSS/syndicated reader will work best for you?

I’m a reader by background, a reading teacher by professional background and now fully engaged in the rich world of online reading. When I started reading online, all was fine. I clicked on the RSS feed symbol in my browser and subscribed. This worked while I was reading a few blogs and could manage them through my favourites. Then I was reading more and more. I tried a few other RSS readers but I couldn’t quite get what I wanted and in the end, I just became overwhelmed and couldn’t keep up with it all. I recently went back to only reading what I subscribed to through email; I was missing out on so much and I just wasn’t very organised.

There must be a way, I thought, and went back to Google recently for some more research. That was when I found Feedly.

It seemed to be exactly what I wanted. I was able to quickly download feedly and get started. The positives? So many:

It looks like a personalised magazine when you open it, so it’s inviting and easy to move around.
You can group your feeds by category.
There are different ways to look at your feeds: by category, latest posts, posts saved for later.
For readability of posts, it’s brilliant: you get a preview; you can click from there to read in full and also easily skip over to the web-page itself.
Sharing is so easy: there are buttons at the top so you can immediately email, tweet or bookmark so you don’t have to go to another site.
There are suggestions of other sites that might be of interest and mostly, they are of interest.
I don’t feel overwhelmed by what I haven’t read; I just read what looks interesting.
It’s very intuitive; it took me no time to work out what to do and how to manage it.
It also has mobile options too.

The negatives?

I haven’t found any yet!

My blog reading and the organisation of my reading is back on track and I feel super-organised. I am reading my favourite bloggers again; I’m finding new blogs and adding them and I’m tweeting and bookmarking via delicious very easily. It’s so much easier to use and friendlier than some of the other reader options I have explored.

So, many thanks to Feedly creators that enabled me to so quickly sort out this vexed issue of managing my online reading.

There are no affiliate links for Feedly or anything else at this time; just enthusiasm from a satisfied Feedly user.

Do you have any comments or tips on how you manage your online reading?

Image by fczuardi from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks