How to Write a Book Report

When the students heard about book report writing usually they come to a panic. It is not because of the lots of reading which may take sufficient time. But, what is the worst; they have to write something about what they have read and it isn't just a plot retelling. They have following strict advices and orders to produce something that will satisfy the supervisor. So to minimize the difficulties with the writing of a good book report we propose you some useful tips which will help you to successfully cope with this task.

Book Report writing tips:

Try to get as much as possible necessary information from your supervisor. Don't be shy and ask as much questions as you need. It will save your time and nerves in the future
Chose an appropriate book. There is no need in being too extraordinary and choose a book you don't understand at all. Take that book you are ready and eager to read and make a proper report
Assign some time for proper and thoughtful reading and thinking
Don't forget to make notes. You can't remember all interesting moments, dialogues, speeches, events and so on. So you should make notes and then fit your notes for the whole work
It will be of a great use to make a sort of preliminary report outlining. Divide your work, make signatures, and write down any smart ideas. Do whatever you consider being proper and useful for further work
Design a plan of your future work. Divide your working time and assign necessary period of time for each stage
Work correction and edition. Read your work more than several times and try to find any possible mistakes and omissions. You can ask your colleagues/friends/classmates to help you with this task. Divide your work between them and ask to provide full cycle of proofreading.

A simple word combination "book report" has been frightening almost any student and it was seemed to be something extremely hard and incomprehensible. But this text is intended for helping you. Read this guide which will make your book report writing more easily and quicker.

So, the first point is…

Get Everything About the Reported Book

The biggest mistake which is made by students' majority is that they don't pay enough attention to book reading. They get a task and leave everything for last few days or even a single day. They do everything except reading itself. We have to make you upset: it is impossible to write a good book report without book reading. So don't be lazy and devote attention to this point.

If you have a possibility to choose a book for future report writing you would have a great chance to select the most suitable book for yourself. Discuss this situation with your supervisor, because all report writing depends on correct selection. We want to propose some useful advices of how to choose a proper book:

Choose the book' according to genre belonging: would it be fiction or maybe you prefer to write about real events and take a nonfictional book? Everything is depends on you
You would make the selection process much easier if you write a list of preferable books and genres and only then go to the library or to a book store
Sometimes it is useful to ask other people for advice. Your friends or colleagues may know something interesting to tell you
Choose a genre you are interested in and look through all possible books from it. Before making the final decision you can read some information about the book and choose the most interesting and worthy reading book
The more interesting book you chose the better reading you would have. If you enjoy your book you will read more carefully and remember all bright events from the book. All these will help you with your book report writing.

Read and Write Annotations

You have already chosen a book for your report writing? Good. Now it's high time to deep in to the reading. To have good and thoughtful reading you probably want to allocate some time for yourself. So, don't leave your reading for the better times and begin it as earlier as possible. From our side we can give you a couple of advices how to make your reading easier and more efficient.

Don't set any reading quota for yourself. If you feel that without a daily reading quota you won't reach your aim (to finish book reading and book report writing, of course) you can set the number of pages. But remember that sometimes quota can transform your reading into a daily routine and make it uninteresting
Don't overload yourself with extra reading. Try to read that page quantity which you can without any excessive efforts
If you want to have some rest from reading you, of course, may have it. But don't make it too long otherwise you may find reading boring or tiresome
If there is no necessity in repeated reading it would be better to do it once again to be sure that you caught everything. The recurring reading would make report writing much easier.

Marking down

Notation is the key component of any reading (if you really want to make it helpful). While you making your notes you remember everything twice better and can recollect everything quicker. Note any key points, events, character descriptions and so on. If you are a book owner you can make it wherever you want, but don't abuse with it. If the book isn't yours don't make it in any case.

Set up some kind of a diary where you can write down all interesting observations and problem points you want to study later.

It would be useful to mark numbers of pages which contain interesting points.

If you are going to rely on your good memory we won't advice you do this. Memory is the thing that can let you down at the most inopportune moment. You have to remember a book plot and have to write a good book report. So don't load yourself with additional and useless activity.

Book Report Outlining

After you have finished your book reading it is a right time to set to notes ranging. According to the book' volume you might divide your notes into useful and useless categories and then decide which of them are worthy of being left.

All your further work will depends on type of a book you have. Let's investigate two cases.

A. You have a fictional book. Then the points will be:

Key events in the story
Locale and action time
Characters description
Your impressions about what had happened in the book. The main objective of the book report writing is to give the students a field for emotions expression and discriminate thinking.

B. Nonfictional book:

Plot of the book
Thoughts and ideas you got from it
Your impressions about the book
Quality of writing
Your estimation of author's impartiality
Your thoughts about the potential audience
Indication about the book' being or not being a part of some cycle
If your friend asks you should he read or not this book what would your answer be?

Book Report' Essential Parts

Now, when you have already finished an outlining process next step is to get down to the rough copy writing. Here you can include all your thoughts and then arrange them.

Introduction

This part is like a prelude to your work. You should give all necessary information and attract reader's attention to your work. It should include the next points:

book title
author's initials and some data about him
is this book fictional or nonfictional?
for fictional book indicate its type (fantasy, novel, comedy etc)
for nonfictional indicate is it a biography, historical or philosophical work and so on
indicate the whole book series if reported book belongs to some
series name (if it exists)
some words about current book (briefly).

Body

This part should be the biggest and the most meaningful one. Here you need to present to the audience information about the book and piece of your own ideas about the reported work. You can make it from 2 till 4 passages. Depending on book' genre belonging you will use peculiar key points for discussion.

So, if you have a fictional type "your" body should include the next points:

locale
teller
participants description
peculiar disposition
you should link everything we mentioned before with the brief story abridgment, but don't include the denouement indication.

If you have a nonfictional book then:

topic
conclusions.

When you finish your book description you should get down to your own impressions describing. Indicate all positive and negative points (on your opinion, of course), what impressed you and what didn't make any effect on your perception. Give a description about the things which have any relation to characters. You need to include everything you want to tell to a potential book audience.

Conclusion

Here, in this section, you need to summarize everything you had done before. Revise you initial ideas and elaborate your work. When you are in writing process it might happen that you change your ideas or attitude according to some points. So make sure that everything is in a order and your final conclusions coincide with the older ones. Think over about book influence on readers and about the author's status being a writer.

We want also to remind you about different types of reports which depend on science you are going to write a book report from. To be sure discuss everything with your supervisor. Here we want to describe two other book report types which might become your writing task.

Personal characterization

If you got such type of a book report you have to concentrate on main personage describing. You should investigate the following:

personage way of communication (speech style, dialogues and so on)
dress style
features of character
any irrepressible ideas or inclination and desires
describe their impact into the whole story
compare their background with the other characters one.

The other type of report is subject studying – you choose some topic inside the book and follow its development through the book. The key points are:

topic explanation
topic proving with the help of arguments you found in the book
estimation of the topic' influence (on a book, character etc)
describe this topic influence on your book' perception.

Now you have the first rough copy of your book report and it is obvious you want to return to it and make some changes, because you probably need to have almost ideal book report – without omissions, mistakes and well – structured one. You need to check the way of spelling and look for any grammar errors. If you find out something is wrong don't think and correct everything even if it would demand rewriting of some piece of your work. Check for coincidence of your statement with the body information and conclusion arguments. It's always useful to ask someone for help. Your friends or colleagues can divide your work and check it for any mistakes.

You will be surprised of that information you got in process of book report writing. You will read a new book, get to know a lot about the author, the key events and background of them. You will learn more about analysis and notes making. Something that seemed to be difficult and incomprehensible can transform into pleasure and interesting activity. Possibly you will be the one who will give an advice for someone who are in book report writing.