Book Review

Book Review

Brittany Brown's book review of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins was only semi-informative.  Brown spends 4 paragraphs of 8 summarizing the plot instead of stating opinions.  A good book review could summarize plot briefly, but I hardly call half of a review brief.  However, her main critique of the book is how it is targeted to too young of an age group because of its mature themes.  So, I can understand how a summary would emphasize this point, but maybe not one this involved.

Brown had two main critiques about the book: that its themes were too mature for the younger audience and that the editing was not perfect.  These were backed up well with evidence which was helpful to the reader.  Her praises, though, left some to be desired.  She stated more than once that she "couldn't put the book down" and had "one of the most enthralling plots" she had ever read.  To me, this is a huge compliment to a piece of literature, but Brown did not elaborate much on them.  She focussed much on the "enthralling" plot (how many times can one person use the word 'enthralling?!), but not on much of anything else.  Since she had already told us all about the plot in the first half of the essay, I was disappointed to find that she really didn't say anything new.

The author's use of argumentative was juvenile.  Her most powerful statements and adjectives were used over and over ("I couldn't put it down" and "enthralling") and eventually they lost their strong meaning.  A better tactic would be to use such strong language sparingly and spend more time on explaining them.  This way, a reader will better understand each individual claim better and therefore understand the strength the whole message.

Also, I found the formatting of the essay to be quite difficult.  She begins with a summary of the main themes, then goes into plot summary, then a critique, then a history of the author, etc...  This order is confusing to the reader, which is exactly opposite of the intent of a book review.  A book review should be clean and have a clear message.  It is helpful that Brown begins and ends her essay with her thesis, but the writing in the middle should be just as easy to follow and informative.

In conclusion, while the reader receives a clear opinion of the literature, Brown could have easily written a cleaner, better fomatted, and more persuasive essay to convince the reader that this book is so fantastic.  It is interesting that she critiques Hunger Games for not having better editing, because this is exactly what her essay needs.