Are you a bibliophile? Do you love to read? Me, too. I love books. When I’m reading a great book, I invariably think of someone I know who would love this book, too, and I want to give them a copy. I want to read the best parts aloud to my friends and family. For the same reason, I’m happy to be able to come to MTAR and share that wonderful book with my fellow book lovers here.
My fellow bibliophiles know what I mean.
It’s exciting when we find a wonderful book. We want to share it with our friends (and we hope you include us as friends). Writing a review here at More Than a Review is a great way to do that… but we know that some people find it intimidating.
If you’ve been planning to leave a review for a book you love (or for one you didn’t like, for that matter) but haven’t yet gotten around to it, let me share with you how easy it is to do.
- First, register. It’s easy, and it helps keep our community friendly.
- Then, check out our review guidelines. This explains how our special star rating system works.
- Find the book you want to review. Click on the title and fill out the review form.
Now comes the hard part! How do you think of something to say? Actually, it’s not that hard.
The key to a great book review is to think of what you’d like to know about a book before you buy it. You don’t want to know the entire plot, but you’d like to know enough about the story that you can tell whether you’d be likely to enjoy it. Is it a breezy piece of chick lit with lots of shoe shopping, or a tear-jerking multigenerational saga filled with historical detail? Give us a hint!
You probably want to know something about the characters — an introduction, if you will. You’d like to know whether the book is well written, and maybe some clue about whether it’s challenging literary writing or just competent storytelling.
Our star system lets you give specific information about the levels of graphic sex and violence, about the possibility of objectionable language, and about the way drugs and alcohol are presented in the book. You can give information beyond the stars, too. Here are some of the comments recent MTAR reviews have included to clarify a violence rating:
- “There is some violence but it seems to fit in the story, not gratuitous.”
- “A few historical scenes of war/torture. If you are faint-hearted you may want to skip a few sections that talk about Vlad the Impaler’s conquests of war. “
- “The violence is ‘off screen.'”
- “This one was more violent than I expected. Some violence from her past is discussed and someone is tortured. The torture scene I could have done without. Took me a couple days to get that image out of my head.”
As you can see, these are the kinds of details that would help you decide whether you would enjoy a book or not.
Think of your review as an opportunity to tell someone else about a book you want to recommend — or warn people about. Tell your fellow MTAR readers about it just the way you’d tell your friends about it.