Writing Book Reviews

You can download any number of book reviews from the net. Times magazine publishes proper book reviews which could give you good models. There are five steps in writing a book review

1. Choosing a book
2. Reading it
3. Taking down notes
4. Planning and writing the first draft
5. Final draft

• Choosing a book:  For beginners, it is better to choose a 200 to 400 page novel with a good plot and interesting characters. It is good to buy a copy than to borrow one since you may have to scribble notes on the margins of the book itself. It is also good to choose a book in which the characters undergo some kind of change rather than those novels in which the characters are either heroes or villains, who have no change of mind or character, from the beginning to the end. Since you also have to mention a little bit about the writer, choose a novel by an established writer. Have some idea about a few of his other writing too so that it will be easy for you to see what the writer is actually telling us.
• Reading the Book: Read a little bit about the book before you actually read it. This will help you put the book in its right context and understand its true meaning. True meaning? Yes, some writers are good at saying one thing and meaning something else. For example, George Orwell’s Animal Farm is more about international politics than about an actual animal farm though the book keeps talking about animals and farms.
• Taking down notes: Since the book is quite long, it is easy to forget examples of different aspects of the book and its style, like dialogues and descriptions, characterisation and setting. So, it is good if you can keep some ‘running notes’ or scraps so that you don’t have to go back to the book or spent time searching ‘that crisp dialogue the heroine had with a rose-bush’.
• Planning and writing the first draft: Make sure you can write a convincing, interesting book review which will give a reader a clear idea about the book.   The following aspects should be mentioned in the review:

1. The author, his reputation, awards, publisher, year of publishing
2. The theme (what is it all about)
3. The plot, in three short paragraphs (how it all began, went ahead and ended)
4. Characters (what kind of people are they) the setting (where does it take place) narrations and style (how well written)
5. Personal Comments ( what is your final opinion on the book and why)

      5.  Final Draft: Make a good, legibly written final draft with no errors. Add a picture of the book or the writer at the end. Provide the list of URLs if you have browsed any. Read it out loud to yourself to see if it reads well.

Pied Beauty by Gerald Manley Hopkins: an analysis

Gerald Manley Hopkins brought into the world of poetry some new methods and theories of his own. A few of them are used in his poem Pied Beauty too.
The poem is in praise of God who crated this world with unimaginable variety. Hopkins uses his own phrases, words, rhythm and ideas to express his awe and wonder at the greatness of the Creator.
He begins the poem with a clear and straight forward statement.

             Glory be to God for dappled things-

Then he goes on to list and describe some of the things in his own way. He believed that, just like the landscapes which refer to the beauty of nature out in the open, everything had its own inner beauty also. He referred to this as the inscape, or the inner world of things. He also believed that through several methods which he referred to as instress, the poet brings out the inscape in everything they write about. So though the poet is writing eulogies and eulogies on God, this is done through bringing to light the real beauty in things.
Hopkins uses some traditional methods like figures of speech and comparisons and well chosen words and sound to show things in a clear light. He also uses rhythm, stress and alliteration to make his lines beautiful. He also invents new words when he finds the old ones inadequate.
For example, he compares the sky which has more than one colour to a cow which has more than one colour. The patterns on the body of a cow are very similar to cloud formations. Hopkins uses the word 'brinded' to refer to the way the cow is coloured. This is a word he coined for the purpose of shedding  new light on the pattern of colours on a cow and in the sky. The new and strange words make the readers look more deeply into the objects of comparison. We do so to get a better meaning of the word but we are actually getting a clearer idea of the objects of comparison.
Hopkins also juxtaposes things of different nature. Just after he describes the sky he talks about the patterns of the body of trouts. After referring to God's greatness as seen in two basic elements, air and water, Hopkins refers to fire indirectly when he says,

 fresh fire-coal chestnut-falls...

In the next line he makes a direct remark about the fourth element, the earth when he says,
Landscape plotted and pierced - fold, fallow and plough;
We can also see that the poet breaks the conventions of language use to keep us alert about his utterances. Since words and phrases easily become cliches, the novelty in expression and the shocking way in which the poet has dared to move away from the conventional usage, help the poet hold our attention while he shares his thoughts with us.
Hopkins uses sprung rhythm as his meter. In this meter the first syllables are stressed and it gives each line its energy and power when we read it out loud. Another device used by the poet is the use of special sounds like sibilance and alliteration as in lines like,

                   Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings

which shows alliteration and

                   with swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim'

which shows sibilance

After showing us a list of things which are examples of pied beauty, the poet goes back to his original intention of praising the glory of God who created all this. He admits that he doesn't know how God makes all things beautiful. He states that God's own beauty remains eternal and unchanged.
Thus the poem raised from mere eulogy or a simple prayer to the level of a work of art since the poet has managed to shed new light on our experiences of life. The thought content remains simple but the way the poet describes the world around makes us see the world as we have never seen it before.