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how do you actually write a good review? should the emphasis be on whats inside the book or what your own impressions are? how to judge something like prose?
In terms of actually learning and on the subjects of books I think its best to not reinvent the wheel and see how its been done in the past. Literary criticism is a pretty bad hydra's head in terms of finding whats good, but usually an author has written on other authors' work so it may be fruitful looking through that. For me personally Essays by Simon Leys, Guy Davenport, and Henry James have been enlightening for me, but also dig into places like the London, New York, and LA review of books they generally have good critical writing (London the most and LA the least).
The reviews that I find most valuable and interesting are highly personal. There's certainly a place for indifferent technical analysis. However, that doesn't matter to me as much as how a work of art affected you. And so in reviews, I'd like to know what kind of relationship you developed with a text. The worst kind of review is therefore one which treats the review as a kind of pseudo-objective formula, impartially considering every element. If you don't have anything interesting to say about a movie's soundtrack, then don't say anything about it! Conversely, the best kind of review is one which will help me understand not only the book being reviewed, but also the world outside of the book, mediated by your own perspective. Be thoughtful, be concise, be human.
I personally like reviews that clearly are written for some imaginary audience and try to sell me on the book at some level. Every review I read I am internally judging whether I should read this book or not, and sometimes the book review is a dense "study" of the book with 0 elements of a sales pitch. This is totally fine, but I do appreciate the books that sell me.
I'm not sure how to write a good review. Instead, I will tell you how to write a review I would like to read. For non-fiction, the task is straightforward: try to explain the thesis of the book, as the author understands it, and describe the main points of evidence supporting that thesis. Then explain whether you think the evidence presented adequately supports the thesis. For fiction, summarize the plot of the book, its main themes, its form, and what it is "really" about. Consider what the author was trying to do, and ask yourself if they have achieved it. Then share whether you thought it was good and why. I think both of these will give a review good scaffolding. But they are not sufficient. Nearly every book already has dozens of reviews on Amazon and in the press. Most publishers already include a summary of the book. For any given book, I can usually tell if I want to spend time reading it or not. One more review will not persuade me. So to write an interesting review, you need to integrate the book into your unique network of knowledge and experience. Take the book as a starting point for a more personal essay, even if this causes you to stray far from the book itself. Read essays from the 16th-19th centuries on classical Greek and Roman authors (Montaigne, Bacon, and Hume come to mind) for guidance. These are interesting because the best of them write about a well-known work in a novel and interesting way. Ideally, reviews on this site will be like that. Nobody needs a summary of The Odyssey or War and Peace. Or even a "novel" interpretation of them. But, I think, many people would like a unique perspective on those works, which can only emerge from connecting it to something you already know. So write a review as if you are describing your experience to a friend. Connect the work to the political happenings of the day, to the ancient past, to your ex-lover, to what you ate for breakfast. Then it will be an interesting review.
>Nobody needs a summary of The Odyssey or War and Peace. Some people need to learn about it for the first time, so a resume is always useful imo. Especially because some books are so famous, their fame obscures the content. Otherwise I agree, beyond the enjoyment of a book, there's a whole other level of enjoyment from understanding the book in relation to others. It's a pleasure to be introduced to an unknown book through that door, especially if it also means entering a reader's interesting view of the world.
I strongly disagree on the summaries. A good review has no summary and only references plot points when absolutely relevant to the analysis. If I have yet to read the book, why would I be invested in a quick and crappy retelling? On top of that, if I am reading a novel, why would I want the key moments to unfold, not how the author planned, but in a quick and crappy retelling? And if I have already read the book, why must I have the book given back to me in a quick and crappy retelling? If you need the book retold to you, then you need to reread the book. If you need to be aware of the plot before you read a book, then you are not a serious reader. I don't like time-wasters. You should get straight into your thoughts and analysis of the book. I do like a bit of blog posting along with a review—maybe how a person felt reading it, but anything more is pure fluff.
It's so disappointing to find a review for a novel you'd like to read and it's a few terse paragraphs summarizing the plot. It strikes me as a consequence of the book marketing industry writ large. So many reviews read like pay-by-the-word, due-by-midnight pulp. Most of the reviews for Solenoid say next to nothing about the novel, to the point you wonder whether anyone actually read it at all.
Write about what caught your eye, about what you were thinking while reading it and (hopefully) what it inspired you to question