Recently, it has come to my
attention that a certain classmate of ours has posted his guide to writing
appropriate and well-structured comments on these blogs, a small but still
relatively significant portion of our class activity; titled The Professional’s Guide To Writing Blog
Comments and peppered throughout with the writer’s signature sense of humor, the post delineates the exact formula
for writing what is essentially the commenting equivalent of a nice loaf of
bread - almost universally pleasing and easy to procure. Reading through his guide, I immediately
thought of the fact that clear patterns in these comments and their structure
must be evident in order for our classmate to be able to write something of
this nature, and then of the fact that these patterns are most likely caused by
how numerous the comments are; below is a discussion of another common
occurrence of our classroom reading blogs that I have observed, that of the
book review, and some of my musings as to why this is the case.
Perhaps the most prominent aspect of
the book review is its straightforwardness as a blog post structure,
particularly useful when one is faced with the dreaded enemy that is writer’s
block. The very nature of the book review as an overview of a book or a series that
one has read recently makes for an approachable format, and it is hard not to
see its intrinsic appeal; the information about the book’s contents required to
write the book review is readily available, and elaborating on and analyzing
said contents is also an accessible and familiar task. Book reviews also happen
to be rather common online as well, so the basic structure of one is rather
easy to recreate and then build upon, creating a format that is easy to work
with.
Book reviews also serve the sole
purpose of informing the audience about particular books that one has read and
their positive and negative attributes; being centered on this goal makes them
an easy format to navigate, as the main idea of the post is decided by default.
Their role as a source of information also adds to their value as a blog post
structure; through perusing the many posts of this nature both on our classroom
reading blogs and elsewhere on the Internet, I have been introduced to many
interesting titles that I would not have encountered otherwise. Their value in
turn adds to their “popularity” as a format, further explaining their ubiquity.
In conclusion, two key aspects of
the book review - its simplicity and its
informativity - contribute to why it is such a common type of blog post.
However, its prevalence combined with the two qualities discussed above create
a tendency for its structure to become formulaic and almost mechanical - not
necessarily a bad thing for something as small and ultimately inconsequential
as a comment, but something that could end up damaging the quality of blog
posts over time. As writers, we should always seek to create original and
thought-provoking content; therefore, we should handle the writing of book
reviews thoughtfully, so that we may avoid this potential danger.
- Jade Li
This is a great sequel to The Professional’s Guide To Writing Blog Comments! I like that you made it very broad so it works for all books in different genres. I think these principles could even be used to help write reviews for other things like movies or games. This is a nice reminder of the two most important parts of a book review.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your response to The Professional's Guide! I agree that sometimes it's easy to fall into a pattern when writing a review, and that one should be careful not to sound monotonous. As a side note, I really like your style of writing -- it's clear and yet distinguished. :)
ReplyDeleteI love how you extended on another's blog post, this was entertaining to read and I thought you made some good points. I also agree with you sometimes while writing our blog post they get super one note and its hard to spice t up every once in a while.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I really like how you structured it. It was clear and flowed really well. It's new and unique that you decided to respond to another blog post. You did a really good job of it, though. I agree that if we aren't careful, our blogs could become boring and monotonous with just book reviews, but I think that it is also possible to create book reviews that are really interesting and original.
ReplyDeleteNice post! I like how you go into detail in something that people don't think much about. Book reviews are a pretty easy format, but they have to be done right so they are still informative and keep the readers attention. I tend to stray away from writing book reviews, but this helps me understand why a lot of other people prefer them.
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