Week Two - Literature and books
Resource 1:
Goodreads is a book reviewing platform that allows users to submit reviews and ratings for books.
Book Marks is a website for book reviews that works on the same premise as Rotten Tomatoes does for films. It compiles reviews of books published by well-known sources such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and creates a rating based on all the reviews. The website shows an excerpt of each review, the link to the review, and assigns the review an overall descriptor from the following options; rave, positive, mixed and pan.
Book 1 - The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
The review panel on The Book Club includes Jennifer Byrne, Marieke Hardy, Jason Steger, Colson Whitehead, and Natalie Haynes. They are all qualified in different ways to be reviewing the book, as writers themselves or regulars on the show, and all five of them come across as authoritative. This is partially the result of the authority that comes with being given airtime by the ABC, as the network's reputation for quality content precedes the show. All of the reviewers justify their responses clearly and seem to have given great thought into what their response to the book is, in both particularities and the book as a whole. There is only bias in terms of their opinions being shaped by what they thought of the author's previous work, and in comparative terms with other books. There is a general consensus among them about where the strengths of the book lie and where the weaknesses lie.
I read a review of the same book, published in the New York Times in July 2017. The authority of the review comes from the reputation of the newspaper who published it. The review seems relatively unbiased, and makes comparisons with other written works in order to examine the successes and failings of the novel in a comparative way and place it in a broader context of contemporary literature. The review seems to largely agree with the opinions given on The Book Club, although this review is somewhat more verbose and inaccessible.
Book 2 - Drown by Junot Diaz
From the same episode of The book Club, this book was chosen for review by Colson Whitehead. It is older than The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, having been published in 1996.As it was chosen by Colson Whitehead, his review may be somewhat biased as it obviously is a book that spoke to him personally, and I think his comments about it reflect that, however all the panelists seem to largely agree with one another and universally had good things to say about it.
I was unable to access a review from The New York Times, so I selected a review from publishersweekly.com which was written in 1996 when the book was first released. The original individual author of the review is not listed on the website, so authority can only be inferred based on the reputation of the magazine. This review makes similar comments as the panelists from The Book Club, although they are largely observations about the style and content of the book and do not given much personal opinion of the book.
Goodreads is a book reviewing platform that allows users to submit reviews and ratings for books.
Resource 2:
Book Marks is a website for book reviews that works on the same premise as Rotten Tomatoes does for films. It compiles reviews of books published by well-known sources such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and creates a rating based on all the reviews. The website shows an excerpt of each review, the link to the review, and assigns the review an overall descriptor from the following options; rave, positive, mixed and pan. Resource 3:
Below is a comparison of book reviews of two different books, comparing the reviews from television program 'The Book Club' (season 11 episode 8) with a written review for each book from the program.Book 1 - The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
The review panel on The Book Club includes Jennifer Byrne, Marieke Hardy, Jason Steger, Colson Whitehead, and Natalie Haynes. They are all qualified in different ways to be reviewing the book, as writers themselves or regulars on the show, and all five of them come across as authoritative. This is partially the result of the authority that comes with being given airtime by the ABC, as the network's reputation for quality content precedes the show. All of the reviewers justify their responses clearly and seem to have given great thought into what their response to the book is, in both particularities and the book as a whole. There is only bias in terms of their opinions being shaped by what they thought of the author's previous work, and in comparative terms with other books. There is a general consensus among them about where the strengths of the book lie and where the weaknesses lie.
I read a review of the same book, published in the New York Times in July 2017. The authority of the review comes from the reputation of the newspaper who published it. The review seems relatively unbiased, and makes comparisons with other written works in order to examine the successes and failings of the novel in a comparative way and place it in a broader context of contemporary literature. The review seems to largely agree with the opinions given on The Book Club, although this review is somewhat more verbose and inaccessible.
Book 2 - Drown by Junot Diaz
From the same episode of The book Club, this book was chosen for review by Colson Whitehead. It is older than The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, having been published in 1996.As it was chosen by Colson Whitehead, his review may be somewhat biased as it obviously is a book that spoke to him personally, and I think his comments about it reflect that, however all the panelists seem to largely agree with one another and universally had good things to say about it.
I was unable to access a review from The New York Times, so I selected a review from publishersweekly.com which was written in 1996 when the book was first released. The original individual author of the review is not listed on the website, so authority can only be inferred based on the reputation of the magazine. This review makes similar comments as the panelists from The Book Club, although they are largely observations about the style and content of the book and do not given much personal opinion of the book.
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