Reflections on Review 3: Secrets and Sins by Jaishree Misra

The novel I reviewed this week was super different from a literary aspect in the sense that it wasn’t exactly a heavy read. It was one of those trashy (in the nicest possible way) novels that one reads when you really don’t want to think about the makings of the universe. This is not to say there aren’t to say that some important themes aren’t present, e.g. loyalty, infidelity, guilt, morality, etc.

In my opinion there has been an improvement in my writing wince last week as I did keep the failings of my last post in mind as I was writing my review. I did state how I felt about this book and what I liked and what I didn’t like and I also did mention the key themes that struck a note with me.

I still think I have a long way to go with my review writing though. As I read all these professional reviews I notice that the writers use creative and witty metaphors and language that inspires images in the readers mind. I think this is one of those things that I will slowly improve on with practice. I’m being realistic here, I don’t think my next review is going to be a piece of literary art but I will try my best to come up with some quirky language so that I too can inspire imagery in the minds of my readers.

Reflections on Review 2: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

This week my hesitation in writing was a little better than last. I had a better idea of how to start and what I wanted to say about the book, which is great!

Da Vinci Code is a really cool book when read on its own (without Angels and Demons) and so it was easy to put down my thoughts. I did try to improve on my weaknesses from last week, for example I structured my work better and in my opinion I think I managed to summarize Langdon’s character well without making it too long. This review was a little different from the last, I didn’t summarize the events in the book as much but I did this on purpose. Reason being that this particular book is a thriller so I wanted to provide the reader enough to give them a sense of what the book is about without spoiling the twists and turns.

I think what I lacked in this review was some emotion and I failed to mention how I thought the book resonated with me. Which I hope to improve on with my next review!

Reflections on Review 1: The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory

Going into writing my first review I was a little lost on where to start and what to put in there. I have read reviews before but I hadn’t actually paid much attention to the structure of it. I thought that summarizing the novel would be a good start and then I added to the review from there. I don’t think I did a great job to be honest; it’s not very in-depth in terms of the character analysis. I found it really hard to fully go into Margret’s character without making the review ridiculously long!I also realize I lacked when it came to properly structuring the review. In the future I need to pay more attention to the chronology of the events in the novel and structure my review accordingly.Hopefully as I progress through this semester I can improve on these aspects!