how to write an essay on a book you read

How to Write an Essay on a Book You Didn't Read: A Simple, Step-By-Step Guide

Writing an A-level essay about book can be a pain on its own. Typically, it takes solid skills, lots of time, and at least a few rounds of reading in order to craft a top-notch paper. But, do things really have to be so hard?

In this article, we will share with you the handiest tips to help you write an essay on book you haven’t read quickly and easily, and, at the same time, ensure the highest grade. Also, if you want to get help with your dissertation, you can visit dissertation help https://dissertation-service.com/dissertation-help service. On this service you can get professional phd dissertation help.

how to write an essay on a book you read

What Is a Book Review Essay?

In our guide, we will help you learn how to start a book review essay even if you haven’t read the book. But, first, let’s define what a book review essay is.

A book review essay is a short piece of writing that reflects on a particular literary work. Such papers present a whole book review with constructive analysis of the author’s ideas, writing style, techniques, etc.

The main purpose of this task is to check if students have actually read the assigned book, assess how well they understood it, and, also, let them share their own thoughts on it.

How to Write an Essay on a Book?

When pondering over how to write an essay about a book you didn’t read, the first idea that will probably cross your mind is to look for a ready-made essay on the Internet. After all, the chances that someone has already written a good essay on the same topic are pretty high. But, we encourage you not to give in to this temptation so as not to get a low grade.

Instead, use other ready-made essays only as examples for writing your own paper. And follow along with our tips on writing an essay on a book to ensure success!

Take Notes While Reading

So, how to start an essay about a book without reading the whole thing? The first thing to do is to carefully read the requirements for your essay in order to understand what information you need to pay attention to. Then, you will move on to skimming through the book. And the first tip is to always take notes while reading. If you write down the key information and ideas it will significantly simplify the process of essay writing book.

You Must Read Introduction and Conclusion

If you want to succeed in writing essay books without wasting too much time, the main rule you have to remember is that reading the book’s introduction and conclusion is a MUST! You may not read the whole piece, but reading the introduction and conclusion will help you grasp the main idea of the book and understand what the author wants to emphasize in it. This trick will help you gather enough information to reflect on this book in essay.

Quickly Read Chapters of the Whole Book

Reading the first and last chapters (intro and conclusion) is vital, but it’s not always enough to grasp the whole idea. Thus, if you want to learn how to write a book essay well, we advise you to read the first paragraph of each chapter to understand the idea better.

Choose a Couple of Main Points

Since a reading essay is often quite short, no one expects you to examine the whole book from core to core. Thus, when you grasp what the book is about, choose a couple of main points (or more, depending on the length) to focus on in your essay on book.

Make the First Draft

Now, how to introduce a book in an essay? When you get over all the preparatory steps and define your focus points, you can move on to completing your first draft by writing down the most important information and ideas for your essay about the book.

Quotes Are One of the Most Important Points in Your Essay on Book

Direct quotes play a huge role in the process of essay writing books review. Professors love to see them in students’ works, so this is a very responsible step. But, here is a trick - the more quotes you find, the less you will have to write yourself.

To use quotes from the book in essay to your benefit, find chapters that relate to the main points you previously selected and review them to find quotes. After you find quotes that explain or support your point of view, put them in the main paragraphs.

Point Your Sources

When thinking about how to talk about a book in an essay using quotes, the main rule is to always cite your quotes accordingly. It will help the teacher see that you’ve read the book and found all the quotes yourself.

Cite sources as required in the guidelines for your essay about reading book provided by the teacher. And remember that the more sources and pages you add, the more it will look like you’ve carefully read the entire book.

Write an Essay on a Book With Us!

In this article, we’ve gathered all the main tips and tricks for successfully writing an essay on a book. However, sometimes even the handiest tips can’t help you create a compelling review of a book in an essay, especially if you lack the time or the task is too complex.

But don’t get desperate just yet! If you still don’t feel confident in your skills even after reading our guide on how to write an essay on a book you didn't read, we’ve got you covered!

At our essay writing service, students can get professional help with writing an essay on book or any other academic paper. Our writers are experts with years of experience and the authors of the best essay writing books, who know how to impress even the most demanding professors and get you an A+. We are here to help you handle any academic task with ease. So, don’t hesitate and let the pros take care of your grades while you can mind your own business!

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How to Write a Book Essay

Book essay writing is an omnipresent assignment imposed by many professors, especially if you are dealing with literature constantly. An essay on a book is usually a way for your teacher to get proof that you gained something from analyzing this book. They want to make sure that you read the book, thus having some personal thoughts that you’d like to express. Also, writing an essay is quite helpful for developing your skills at articulating thoughts. If you want to know how to write a book essay, then we are here to help you understand it in detail.

What to Consider Writing an Essay on a Book

What is different from your usual essay, is that you need to express your thoughts after reading a certain work and then choose a direction to go from. It is a combination of character analysis combined with your personal feelings on the work that ultimately culminates in the creation of an expressive critical essay on a book. But how to write an essay about a book? Mind you, a professional essay on a book consists of certain criteria, that like chemical compounds create a proper reaction from a reader’s perspective:

This is the flair that you base your essay upon. This is when you’re creativeness comes to play, you want your essay to be unique
The way you structuralize sentences and pick certain words for your essay.
The basic structure of an essay, which usually consists of an introduction, main body, and conclusion.
Your essay bears an informative approach, being somewhat emotive to express personal thoughts on a particular book.

📚 How to Prepare for Book Essay Writing

Before writing an essay about a book, you need to think clearly about which plan to use, so that the flow of thoughts lines up into coherent, logical sentences.

How to start off an essay about a book? Immediately after receiving the topic of the essay, ideas and images will begin to arise in your head (of course, if you have read the work). On a rough sheet of paper, sketch the phrases or words that first come to mind. Then they can be developed into a whole essay.

So, think carefully about what you want to say about the topic. Then write down your thoughts on paper in a column. And then decide in what order you want to display these thoughts on paper. This is necessary for a clear and distinct structure of the work.

Read the Book Exhaustively

So how to start an essay about a book? Naturally, the main path to successfully writing an essay on a book is to more or less know the contents of the story. We’re not talking about remembering every single character trait or knowing the gist of each internal monologue. Just focus on what you find alluring about the story, trying to create the idea from a scene that you enjoy in particular. Then you can connect this scene to the character development, thus proving a point that even the smallest scene can influence the overall conclusion of the story. Plus, not knowing the story will make you unable to bring in examples, thus making you obliged to order an essay online .

Make Up One’s Mind About the Topic

How to write a book analysis essay perfectly? Another important thing about approaching a book essay is setting up an idea you’d like to share with the readers. Do you want to lead to a positive conclusion, something philosophical, or go in the direction that no one previously dared to? The idea here is that you need to create a point to focus on and try not to digress from it as much. Do you want to show how the hero struggles with basic human needs? If so, then don’t describe scenes where they do the opposite.

Prepare an Outline

How to write an analysis essay on a book? You have to think of a good outline. An outline is a sort of plan that you don’t want to diverge from. Planning is one of the fortes of humanity and without it, your essay might sound clunky and chaotic. Jumping randomly from point to point won’t get you high scores. Imagine creating an overarching ladder where your point gets stronger and stronger due to the logical nature of your essay. Think about how you want to start your essay, the quotes to strengthen your point, and the natural conclusion you’d like to bring your readers to. This is the gist of an outline.

Don’t Forget About Quotes

Another important aspect of how to write a book analysis is quoting a character to properly refer to a particular scene. An essay usually implies that you have access to all the resources you need, so it wouldn’t pose difficulty to look up a direct quote of a character that correlates with your thoughts. This is extremely important for professors as they want to be persuaded that you know what you are talking about. This is especially true if they are a fan of the story you are writing an essay on. People usually look for like-mindedness, being extremely happy about seeing someone agreeing with them.

📑 How to Structure Your Book Analysis Essay

How to introduce a book in an essay? Like any essay, a creative writing paper in literature consists of several elements:

Introduction.
Definition of the problem, its relevance.
The formulation of one’s position.
Arguments that support it.

The structure of the final essay on literature should be clear. Do not make too many paragraphs, but do not break the text into many small passages.

How to Start a Book Analysis Essay?

In the introductory part, the information should be written as if it were read by someone completely unfamiliar with the problem. Here you need to reveal the topic, the problem, and the relevance of the essay. The questions you can put in front of you will help with this:

What work are you writing your essay/essay on?
What do you know about the author of the work?
What is the genre of the work (comedy, drama, novel, etc.)? What aspects would you like to explore in your work?

Writing a Thesis Statement

How to start a paragraph about a book? You are in need of a thesis statement. A thesis statement is the main element for creating a perfect introduction and is your cornerstone to transition to the main body. It is a sentence where you state the main point of your essay, wanting to announce what it is that you are going to analyze. Thus the path to succeeding with the thesis statement is to make it correlate with your conclusion. In fact, you might even start writing a conclusion first, and then write a thesis statement based on it.

Create a Body Paragraph

Here it is necessary to highlight the thoughts that the work evoked, the emotions toward the chosen character or its circumstances.

Each idea will have to be supported by examples from the original text of the work. If you say that the problem of war worries the character, then you need to give examples in which this excitement is conveyed to the reader.

The main part is, for the most part, your reasoning about what you care about in the whole story. Show the evolution of your thought here, from what point in the work it originated, how it evolved, and what conclusion it eventually led to.

Book Essay Conclusion

And this is the finale you lead your readers to. So how to write a conclusion for an argumentative essay ? You create a final point based on everything you’ve been describing in the main body, reinstating the main point in the introduction. Mind you, that conclusion shouldn’t have any new information that wasn’t previously described. You just want to make your thoughts ironclad and protect those from basic criticism.

Need Help Writing an Essay on Books?

How to write an essay on a book when you are not invested in it? If you have an issue with creating an essay on books, then we are more than ready to help you out here. Not everyone is ready to read a book for the sake of making a teacher happy. Sometimes literature can be unbearable with a student who has no interest in or time to engage with it. Nevertheless, your assignment needs to be done and if a perfect score is something you are aiming for, then our paper writing services are the way to go.

Our team is made of literature experts that can learn the book in-depth, knowing exactly what your teacher might be looking for. We stick to the structure described in this article, coming up with a quality outline, and then writing a proper essay that is full of argumentation and persuasiveness.

What is the purpose of a book analysis essay?

A book analysis essay is usually created to write your thoughts on a particular book, trying to prove a personal statement concerning it. Perhaps you’d like to dive into the inner thoughts of a character, analyzing what elements led them to a particular path. You can go the other direction and analyze the writer’s style, complimenting them on creating this rich world. Furthermore, a book analysis essay can be full of critique for nobody is obliged to love everything.

How to talk about a book in an essay?

The main idea of writing an essay about a book is stating the point that is yours and yours only. The path to success is all about loving what you write, instead of feeling obliged to do something. If you just want to create something for the sake of just making an assignment, then your essay can feel bland. If you don’t like the work you need to write an essay on, then go with this direction and bring your fair share of critique.

How to start an essay on a book?

Asking yourself how to start an essay on a book? An essay usually starts with an introduction. You start it with a philosophical sentence that usually invites the reader to reminisce about the contents of the book. This is where you usually state the purpose of your essay, outlining the main point that you are further going to prove in the main body.

How many paragraphs are in a book essay?

The format for a book essay can differ from professor to professor but usually, it has five paragraphs or so. You don’t need to create a huge memoir on a particular book. Rather, you pick some narrow aspect hidden within it and try to condense your thoughts into one page. The most important aspect here is to not make it watery, repeating your point with no progress.

How to write an analysis paper on a book with a good outline?

The outline is the blueprint for creating your essay. This is where you want to create your main point, and then plan how you are going to prove it with particular examples from a book. An outline exists to properly structuralize your essay, without feeling random.

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How to Start an Essay About a Book: A Comprehensive Guide

Starting an essay about a book might seem like an uphill endeavor, but with the right approach, you can create an engaging introduction that sets the tone for your entire paper. Whether you’re a student or an aspiring writer, this guide will provide you with practical insights, creative ideas, and actionable steps on how to start an essay about a book that leaves a lasting impression on your readers.

Introduction: Setting the Stage for Literary Analysis

Writing an essay about a book is an opportunity to delve into the world of literature, explore themes, characters, and narratives, and express your unique perspective. The introduction serves as the gateway to your essay, inviting readers to join you on your literary journey. Let’s explore the art of crafting captivating introductions for essays about books.

Related: Can I Start My College Essay with a Quote? Tips and Insights

How to Start an Essay About a Book

Embarking on the journey of writing an essay about a book requires careful consideration and strategic planning. Here are essential steps to guide you through the process:

1. Understand the Book’s Context and Significance

To create an impactful introduction, begin by understanding the book’s historical context, the author’s background, and the broader significance of the work. This contextual knowledge will help you establish the relevance of the book and its themes to your readers.

2. Choose an Intriguing Angle

Diving into the vast sea of literary elements, select an angle that piques readers’ curiosity. Whether it’s a thematic exploration, character analysis, or a critical review, a unique angle sets the stage for an engaging introduction.

3. Craft a Compelling Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement is the backbone of your essay. It should succinctly convey your main argument and guide your readers on what to expect. A well-crafted thesis statement is both thought-provoking and informative.

4. Open with a Captivating Hook

Draw readers in with a captivating hook that sparks their interest. This could be a thought-provoking question, a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or a vivid description. A compelling hook sets the tone for an engaging essay.

5. Provide Brief Contextual Background

Offer a concise overview of the book’s plot, main characters, and central themes. Provide enough information to orient readers without giving away too much. Leave them curious and eager to explore further.

6. Introduce Your Approach

Outline the approach you’ll take in your essay. Briefly explain the key points you’ll be discussing and the insights you aim to uncover. This gives readers a roadmap for what’s to come.

7. Use LSI Keywords for Depth

Incorporate Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords related to the book and its themes. This not only boosts SEO but also enhances the depth and relevance of your introduction.

8. Incorporate Relevant Quotes

Weave in relevant quotes from the book that supports your thesis. Quotes add credibility and allow readers to connect with the text on a deeper level.

9. Highlight the Book’s Impact

Discuss the book’s impact on literature, society, or culture. Explain why it remains relevant and worth discussing. This shows your awareness of the book’s broader implications.

10. Pose Thought-Provoking Questions

Engage readers by posing thought-provoking questions related to the book’s themes. Encourage them to reflect on their own interpretations and viewpoints.

11. Share Personal Connections

If applicable, share personal anecdotes or connections you have with the book. This personal touch adds authenticity to your introduction.

12. Offer a Glimpse of Analysis

Give readers a glimpse of the analytical journey ahead. Mention the key aspects you’ll delve into and the critical lenses you’ll apply.

13. Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge potential counterarguments or differing interpretations of the book. Demonstrating a balanced perspective strengthens your credibility as an essay writer.

14. Build Anticipation

Create anticipation for the rest of your essay. Tease the insights and revelations readers can expect in the subsequent sections.

15. Power Keywords for Impact

Incorporate power keywords that evoke emotion and create impact. Words like “profound,” “intriguing,” or “riveting” add a dynamic flair to your introduction.

16. Incorporate a Compelling Anecdote

Share a brief and relevant anecdote that relates to the book’s themes. Anecdotes humanize the topic and engage readers on a personal level.

17. Outline Structure and Flow

Provide a brief overview of the essay’s structure and how you’ll navigate through different sections. A clear roadmap enhances readability.

18. Address the Reader Directly

Speak directly to the reader, inviting them to explore the book alongside you. This creates a sense of connection and involvement.

19. Utilize Rich Formatting

Enhance readability by using rich formatting such as bold, italics, and bullet points. These elements visually break up the text and highlight key information.

20. Reference Credible Sources

When discussing the book’s significance or impact, reference credible sources such as literary critics, scholars, or reputable articles. This adds depth to your introduction.

21. Transition to the Main Body

Conclude your introduction with a seamless transition to the main body of the essay. Create a logical bridge that encourages readers to continue reading.

Related: What Brings You Joy College Essay Example

Step-by-Step Guide on How to Start an Essay About a Book

Step 1: Choose the Book

Select a book that you want to write about. Ensure that the book is relevant to your essay’s topic and aligns with your thesis or main argument.

Step 2: Understand the Assignment

Read the essay assignment or prompt carefully. Understand the specific requirements, such as the length, format, and any guidelines provided by your instructor.

Step 3: Read and Analyze the Book

Read the book thoroughly, taking notes on key plot points, characters, themes, and any literary devices used by the author. Analyze the book’s significance and consider why it’s worth writing about.

Step 4: Determine Your Approach

Decide how you want to approach the essay. Will you be analyzing a specific theme, character, or literary technique? Clarify your main focus and identify the key points you want to discuss.

Step 5: Craft Your Thesis Statement

Develop a clear and concise thesis statement that outlines your main argument or purpose for writing the essay. This thesis will guide the direction of your essay.

Step 6: Choose an Engaging Opening Strategy

Now, let’s delve into different strategies for starting your essay about the book:

1. Quotation: Begin with a relevant and impactful quote from the book. Explain its significance and how it relates to the themes you’ll be discussing.

2. Anecdote: Share a short anecdote or personal story that connects to the book’s themes. This can help create an emotional or relatable entry point.

3. Question: Pose a thought-provoking question related to the book’s themes or characters. Invite the reader to think critically about the topic.

4. Contrast: Highlight a sharp contrast between elements in the book or between the book and real-world situations. This can create intrigue and set the stage for your analysis.

5. Shocking Fact: Present a surprising or shocking fact related to the book’s content, themes, or impact. This can capture the reader’s attention immediately.

Step 7: Provide Context

After your engaging opening, briefly introduce the book by mentioning its title, author, and publication date. Provide a concise overview of the book’s plot or central idea.

Step 8: Preview Main Points

Give the reader a preview of the main points you’ll be discussing in the essay. This helps them understand the structure and flow of your analysis.

Step 9: Transition to Your Thesis

Smoothly transition from the introduction to your thesis statement. Explain how the opening strategy you chose connects to your main argument.

Step 10: Revise and Edit

Review your introduction for clarity, coherence, and grammar. Make sure it effectively introduces the book and sets the tone for your essay.

Remember, a well-crafted introduction can captivate your readers and set the stage for a compelling essay. Experiment with different opening strategies to find the one that best suits your writing style and the content of your essay.

FAQs on How to Start an Essay About a Book

How do i choose the right book for my essay.

Select a book that resonates with you personally or aligns with the theme of your course. Consider books that offer rich material for analysis and discussion.

Can I start my essay with a question?

Absolutely! Starting with a thought-provoking question can be an effective way to engage readers and introduce your essay’s central ideas.

What if I haven’t read the entire book?

While it’s ideal to read the entire book, you can still write a compelling essay by focusing on specific sections or chapters that relate to your chosen angle.

Should I provide a detailed summary in the introduction?

Avoid excessive summarization in the introduction. Instead, provide a concise overview that leaves room for an in-depth exploration of the main body.

How can I make my introduction stand out?

Infuse your introduction with your unique voice and perspective. Be creative, bold, and authentic in your approach.

Is it okay to share personal emotions in the introduction?

Sharing personal emotions or connections to the book can add depth to your introduction, but ensure it aligns with the tone and purpose of your essay.

Final Verdict

Crafting the perfect introduction for your essay about a book is an art that requires a combination of creativity, analysis, and strategic thinking. By following these steps and incorporating engaging elements, you can start your essay on a strong note, capturing your reader’s attention and setting the stage for a captivating exploration of literature.

Remember, the introduction is just the beginning of your essay-writing journey. As you delve into the main body, keep the momentum going with insightful analysis, well-supported arguments, and a cohesive structure.

So, go ahead and embark on your literary adventure. Start your essay about a book with confidence, and watch as your words transport readers into the fascinating world of literature.

Related: How Do You Write a Book Title in an Essay

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Readers' Corner

How to Write an Essay On Books

To write a good essay about books on a free topic, you just need to understand what you want to get. And, based on this information, make a plan.

To begin with, you need to understand the difference between these concepts:

Are you writing a personal opinion about a book? You can tell whether you liked it or not, what in it caught you or repulsed you.
Or is it an overview of the story lines? A full description of what is written in the book, your thoughts on the main points of the book.
Or is it a description of the book? Then highlight points of interest. This kind of text usually encourages you to read it.

If you are writing an essay on books for school, you probably need to write a book review.

Preparing for the essay

The experts at StudyCrumb Educational Agency assure you that by following a simple procedure, you will be able to write the essay you need quickly and easily.

Choose the book you want to write an essay about. It is better if it is one that you have memorized well. Some teachers recommend writing an essay on your favorite books.
Make a short outline that includes an introduction, the main part, and a conclusion.
Recall what your book is about. Write out a couple of main thoughts that are memorable and seem close to your heart.
Write a review of the book, the kind you’d like to write for your friend. In simple, uncomplicated words.

Essay Writing

Having prepared your drafts and outline for your essay, you’ve already done a tremendous job, and it’s just a matter of doing a little bit more. Be sure to remember that the essay about the book you read is your thoughts, feelings, and emotions about the work itself.

In the water part, write about the plot of the book, about the essence, but don’t reveal the intrigue completely, so that your classmates can read the book too. You can quote a few curious places, but don’t forget to justify why you chose them.

In the main part you should write your personal opinion of what you have read. If the teacher did not mention that the book must necessarily be a favorite, you can also write about the book, which, on the contrary, left a negative residue in your soul.

It is better to make the ending short and concise. Write what you like to read, why you like to read, and recommend the chosen work to read all. Check out http://cheapessaysonline.com/ for quality essay examples for your own inspiration.

Examples of essay on books

An essay about a book leaves the imagination free, especially when you’re a big fan of the book world. But sometimes reading is much easier than writing. So here are a few examples of essays.

Introduction:

“I love to read. Reading helps you immerse yourself in that completely different world. Makes you forget that you are a mere student. You can become a great traveler, fly around the globe, or you can find yourself in a school of magic and learn complex magical sciences. My choice was the Harry Potter book, because that’s the world where I spent my childhood.

“My favorite book is Roald Dahl ‘s Matilda. I think this work is suitable for children as well as adults. Matilda is a little girl with strange parents and a very mean principal. And then, one day, a good teacher shows up at school who treats all the students, including Matilda, with awe. When I was little, I was sure it was just a fairy tale. But now, after rereading this book to refresh my memory, I realize that the book has adult overtones. Matilda is the personification of all the children of the world who face the hostility of adults who should not have been parents or educators.”

The final part:

“I would like to finish my essay about the book “Three Comrades” with the advice: read, look for a moral in any work, and you can become a good person.

These are just examples of how you can write essay on books. Choose your favorite book and write whatever you want to say.

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The Beginner's Guide to Writing an Essay | Steps & Examples

An academic essay is a focused piece of writing that develops an idea or argument using evidence, analysis, and interpretation.

There are many types of essays you might write as a student. The content and length of an essay depends on your level, subject of study, and course requirements. However, most essays at university level are argumentative — they aim to persuade the reader of a particular position or perspective on a topic.

The essay writing process consists of three main stages:

Preparation: Decide on your topic, do your research, and create an essay outline.
Writing : Set out your argument in the introduction, develop it with evidence in the main body, and wrap it up with a conclusion.
Revision: Check your essay on the content, organization, grammar, spelling, and formatting of your essay.

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Essay writing process, preparation for writing an essay, writing the introduction, writing the main body, writing the conclusion, essay checklist, lecture slides, frequently asked questions about writing an essay.

The writing process of preparation, writing, and revisions applies to every essay or paper, but the time and effort spent on each stage depends on the type of essay .

For example, if you’ve been assigned a five-paragraph expository essay for a high school class, you’ll probably spend the most time on the writing stage; for a college-level argumentative essay , on the other hand, you’ll need to spend more time researching your topic and developing an original argument before you start writing.

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Before you start writing, you should make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to say and how you’re going to say it. There are a few key steps you can follow to make sure you’re prepared:

Understand your assignment: What is the goal of this essay? What is the length and deadline of the assignment? Is there anything you need to clarify with your teacher or professor?
Define a topic: If you’re allowed to choose your own topic , try to pick something that you already know a bit about and that will hold your interest.
Do your research: Read primary and secondary sources and take notes to help you work out your position and angle on the topic. You’ll use these as evidence for your points.
Come up with a thesis: The thesis is the central point or argument that you want to make. A clear thesis is essential for a focused essay—you should keep referring back to it as you write.
Create an outline: Map out the rough structure of your essay in an outline . This makes it easier to start writing and keeps you on track as you go.

Once you’ve got a clear idea of what you want to discuss, in what order, and what evidence you’ll use, you’re ready to start writing.

The introduction sets the tone for your essay. It should grab the reader’s interest and inform them of what to expect. The introduction generally comprises 10–20% of the text.

1. Hook your reader

The first sentence of the introduction should pique your reader’s interest and curiosity. This sentence is sometimes called the hook. It might be an intriguing question, a surprising fact, or a bold statement emphasizing the relevance of the topic.

Let’s say we’re writing an essay about the development of Braille (the raised-dot reading and writing system used by visually impaired people). Our hook can make a strong statement about the topic:

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability.

2. Provide background on your topic

Next, it’s important to give context that will help your reader understand your argument. This might involve providing background information, giving an overview of important academic work or debates on the topic, and explaining difficult terms. Don’t provide too much detail in the introduction—you can elaborate in the body of your essay.

3. Present the thesis statement

Next, you should formulate your thesis statement— the central argument you’re going to make. The thesis statement provides focus and signals your position on the topic. It is usually one or two sentences long. The thesis statement for our essay on Braille could look like this:

As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness.

4. Map the structure

In longer essays, you can end the introduction by briefly describing what will be covered in each part of the essay. This guides the reader through your structure and gives a preview of how your argument will develop.

The invention of Braille marked a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by blind and visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

Write your essay introduction

The body of your essay is where you make arguments supporting your thesis, provide evidence, and develop your ideas. Its purpose is to present, interpret, and analyze the information and sources you have gathered to support your argument.

Length of the body text

The length of the body depends on the type of essay. On average, the body comprises 60–80% of your essay. For a high school essay, this could be just three paragraphs, but for a graduate school essay of 6,000 words, the body could take up 8–10 pages.

Paragraph structure

To give your essay a clear structure , it is important to organize it into paragraphs . Each paragraph should be centered around one main point or idea.

That idea is introduced in a topic sentence . The topic sentence should generally lead on from the previous paragraph and introduce the point to be made in this paragraph. Transition words can be used to create clear connections between sentences.

After the topic sentence, present evidence such as data, examples, or quotes from relevant sources. Be sure to interpret and explain the evidence, and show how it helps develop your overall argument.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

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The conclusion is the final paragraph of an essay. It should generally take up no more than 10–15% of the text . A strong essay conclusion :

Returns to your thesis
Ties together your main points
Shows why your argument matters

A great conclusion should finish with a memorable or impactful sentence that leaves the reader with a strong final impression.

What not to include in a conclusion

To make your essay’s conclusion as strong as possible, there are a few things you should avoid. The most common mistakes are:

Including new arguments or evidence
Undermining your arguments (e.g. “This is just one approach of many”)
Using concluding phrases like “To sum up…” or “In conclusion…”

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

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Checklist: Essay

My essay follows the requirements of the assignment (topic and length ).

My introduction sparks the reader’s interest and provides any necessary background information on the topic.

My introduction contains a thesis statement that states the focus and position of the essay.

I use paragraphs to structure the essay.

I use topic sentences to introduce each paragraph.

Each paragraph has a single focus and a clear connection to the thesis statement.

I make clear transitions between paragraphs and ideas.

My conclusion doesn’t just repeat my points, but draws connections between arguments.

I don’t introduce new arguments or evidence in the conclusion.

I have given an in-text citation for every quote or piece of information I got from another source.

I have included a reference page at the end of my essay, listing full details of all my sources.

My citations and references are correctly formatted according to the required citation style .

My essay has an interesting and informative title.

I have followed all formatting guidelines (e.g. font, page numbers, line spacing).

Your essay meets all the most important requirements. Our editors can give it a final check to help you submit with confidence.

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An essay is a focused piece of writing that explains, argues, describes, or narrates.

In high school, you may have to write many different types of essays to develop your writing skills.

Academic essays at college level are usually argumentative : you develop a clear thesis about your topic and make a case for your position using evidence, analysis and interpretation.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

It gives your writing direction and focus.
It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

A topic sentence is a sentence that expresses the main point of a paragraph . Everything else in the paragraph should relate to the topic sentence.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

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A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing an Essay on a Book

Topic and assignment prompt, essay structure, why is it important.

Outlining Essay Structure

Organizing your essay efficiently is important for making sure it’s clear, concise, and to the point. Before you start writing, it’s important to understand the basic structure of an essay. Most essays are composed of an introduction, body, and conclusion.

The introduction serves as an opening paragraph where you should introduce the topic and provide any necessary background information that readers may need in order to understand the essay. A good introduction will explain why a reader should care about your topic and capture the attention of the reader.

The body is the main section of the essay where you will provide evidence, quotes, and any other relevant information to prove your point. It is important to make sure that each body paragraph has only one main point, and all of the evidence presented in the paragraph supports that one point.

The conclusion is the last paragraph of the essay. It should wrap up all of the points you made in the body and leave the reader with a sense of closure. It should also create a takeaway, or something for the reader to remember about what they have just read.

To make sure your essay is organized and has a consistent tone throughout, it is important to outline what each section should include. Outlining your essay structure before beginning eliminates unnecessary stress and makes sure you don’t forget any important points.

Research Phase: The Importance of Researching the Book

Before you dive into writing your essay on a book, you’ll want to make sure that you have done your research. No matter how familiar you are with the subject, it’s important to conduct research to ensure that your essay is accurate and well-informed.

Research can help you form a stronger thesis statement, better support your arguments, and provide evidence for your claims. It can also help you to organize your thoughts, uncover new ideas and angles, gain a deeper understanding of the text, or even find quotes or references that you can use in your essay.

Research should always come first. It helps to lay a strong foundation for the rest of your essay and it can save you from making any embarrassing mistakes. Have a clear understanding of the book’s themes, characters, and plot before you begin. Read reviews and criticisms, and take down notes for later.

Start by reading the book itself. Take your time and pay attention to details. Make notes, highlight any important passages, and consider different interpretations. After you get an overall gist of the book, expand your research outward into scholarly reviews, biographies, and other texts that can provide an objective, informed perspective.

The more research you do, the stronger your essay will be. Be sure to include all of the sources you used in your bibliography section. Research can be a tedious process, but with enough effort and dedication, you’ll be able to craft a well-informed, thoughtful essay on any book.

Pre-Writing Phase: Planning Your Essay

The pre-writing phase is the most important part of writing an essay on a book. Taking the time to plan your essay and organize your thoughts will help structure your argument and make your writing smoother. The pre-writing phase should involve a few key steps.

Brainstorm – Before you start writing, spend some time thinking about the book and how it relates to any themes, characters, or symbolism. Jot down your ideas so that you have a better understanding of what you want to focus on.
Outline – Write down some notes and make an outline of what you will cover in each paragraph. This will help you stay organized while writing and keep everything on track.
Research – Research any facts or quotes you may need to include in your essay. This will help you back up your claims and make your paper stronger.

Taking the time to plan ahead will help ensure your essay on a book is written clearly and effectively. You’ll be able to shape your argument easily and make sure you don’t miss anything important.

Thesis Formation

The thesis statement is a critical part of any essay on a book. It should be clear, concise, and capture the main argument and point of view of the essay. To ensure that your essay’s thesis statement is well-crafted, it is essential to follow a step-by-step guide.

Step One: Brainstorming Ideas

Before writing a thesis statement, you should brainstorm some ideas related to the book’s content. Consider the key elements of the book and think about how they could be connected into an argument or observation. Write down any ideas that pop into your mind, and use them as a basis for forming your thesis statement.

Step Two: Developing the Argument

Once you have a few ideas in mind, it is time to start developing a coherent argument. Try to make a connection between the ideas to create an original argument. Then, think about why this argument is important and what makes it relevant to the text.

Step Three: Writing the Thesis Statement

Now that you have an argument in mind, you are ready to craft your thesis statement. It should be a single sentence that clearly and concisely expresses your main argument. Generally, it should follow the same structure as any other essay’s thesis statement, stating the primary point of view, the evidence supporting it, and any other relevant details.

Step Four: Proofreading

The final step of crafting a great thesis statement is to proofread and edit it. Make sure that the statement is clear, concise, and captures the argument accurately. Additionally, pay attention to grammar and spelling. A minor mistake can weaken the force of the statement significantly.

Creating an effective thesis statement can help get your essay off to a strong start. As long as you follow these steps, you will be able to form a well-developed argument that can help you write a great essay on a book.

Drafting an Organized Paragraph

Editing: benefits and how to approach it effectively.

When writing an essay on a book, editing is a crucial step in the process. It can often be overlooked or skipped, but it shouldn’t be! Editing offers many valuable benefits, and it’s important to understand how to approach it effectively.

One of the biggest benefits of editing is that it gives you the opportunity to look at your essay with fresh eyes. Once you’ve written the paper, it can be nearly impossible to look at it objectively. Editing allows you to look at it critically and make necessary changes.

Editing also helps you to catch grammar mistakes, spelling errors, and typos. A single error can easily ruin an entire essay, so it’s essential to go over the paper and make sure everything is perfect. This can only be done by editing the paper carefully.

Finally, editing can help you to make sure that the essay is coherent and well-written. After writing the paper , you might realize that the introduction and conclusion don’t match up, or that two paragraphs contradict each other. Editing will help you to identify such issues and make the necessary adjustments.

Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of editing, let’s look at how to approach it effectively. The first step is to read the entire essay through once without making any changes. This should give you a good overview of the paper and allow you to spot any major issues. The next step is to go through the paper again and make notes as you go along.

You should pay particular attention to grammar, spelling, typos, and structure. Make a note of anything that stands out and needs to be changed. Don’t worry if you can’t fix it right away – just write it down and come back to it later. The goal is to get an overall picture of what needs to be done.

Finally, it’s time to make the actual changes. Take your time and read each sentence carefully before you make any changes. Don’t be afraid to delete or add content between paragraphs to ensure that the essay flows naturally.

In summary, editing is an essential step in the essay-writing process. It offers many benefits, including the ability to look at the essay objectively, catch grammar mistakes and typos, and ensure that the essay is coherent and well-written. When approaching the editing phase, it’s important to read the paper through once without making any changes, make notes as you go, and take your time when making the actual changes.

Formatting – Adhering to Academic Standards

Formatting your essay correctly is a critical step in the writing process. It shows that you have taken care to put together an essay that follows the academic standards.

Here are a few tips for formatting your essay according to academic standards:

Make sure the margins of your essay are set to one inch on all sides.
Your font should be size 12 Times New Roman or Arial.
Use double spacing between lines, and make sure there is no extra space before or after each paragraph.
When quoting direct text, indenting it five spaces will make it easier to read.
Include a header at the top of your document that includes the title of the essay, your name, and the page number.

Formatted correctly, your essay will present itself as concise, organized, and professional. This is a must when following academic standards.

If you want to ensure that your essay looks even better, check with your professor for specific formatting requirements for your assignment.

By taking the time to properly format your essay, you are showing that you understand the importance of adhering to academic standards. This will help you get the best grades possible!

Understanding the Assignment

Writing an essay on a book can be quite a challenge for many students. One of the most important skills for tackling this task is to understand the assignment. To begin, students should read carefully and take notes on the writing prompt. Pay close attention to all the instructions as they are key to crafting an effective essay. This includes being mindful of any keywords or phrases in the prompt that will require further research.

When interpreting the instructions, it is also important to consider any extra guidelines or expectations the professor may have provided. These can include formatting, length, and specific areas of emphasis such as themes or characters. Questions such as ‘Who is the protagonist?’ or ‘How do the themes interact?’ should be actively considered while writing the essay. This helps produce a focused piece of work that is tailored to meet the requirements.

In addition, consider questions such as ‘What do I need to include?’ or ‘What is the purpose of this essay?’. Answering these questions allows students to identify their main points and develop an argument around them. This is a crucial step for forming an essay that is logical and cohesive.

Finally, students should always use the essay assignment to test their understanding of the book. It is often beneficial to leave time at the end of the writing process to review knowledge and reflect on any unanswered questions. Doing so ensures that the essay is comprehensive and addresses all aspects of the prompt.

Understanding the assignment is a vital step when writing an essay on a book. By paying attention to the prompt and any additional guidelines, students can ensure that their assignment is focused, detailed, and suitable for the task.

Effective Use of Quotes

Make sure your quote is relevant to the main argument of your essay.

Choose a quote that is engaging and thought-provoking.

Include the right amount of detail – don’t use too much or too little.

Explain the quote in your own words and provide context.

Think critically about the quote and how it applies to your argument.

Integrate the quote into your essay so that it flows naturally.

Tools for Writing an Essay on a Book

When writing an essay on a book there are certain tools that can help make the process easier. Knowing some of these basic terms and tools can help you write a better essay and make it much more enjoyable.

Creating an outline is one of the most important steps in writing an essay. It provides structure to your essay, ensuring that each point is made in the correct order and that the essay flows logically. Outlining also helps you stay organized and remember what needs to be included in the essay.

Doing research is important when writing an essay about a book. Read through the text and make notes about any interesting or pertinent information you find. Also, look for additional sources that can provide further insight into the book or the topics it raises.

Grammar and Spelling Checkers

Grammar and spelling checkers can be extremely useful when writing your essay. They can help you identify mistakes or typos that you may have missed. Double-check your work before you submit it to make sure it is as accurate and error-free as possible.

Writing Resources

Finally, there are many great writing resources available online that can provide further advice and guidance on how to write an effective essay. Look through examples of essays written by other students and learn from their techniques and approaches.

Knowing some of these basic terms and tools can help you get off to a strong start when writing an essay on a book. Do your research, create an outline, and use grammar and spelling checkers to make sure your work is as perfect as possible. Finally, don’t forget to look for other writing resources that can provide insight and advice.

Writing an essay on a book can be a daunting task, especially when attempting it for the first time. This guide aims to make the process of writing an essay on a book simple and easy-to-follow. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can make the process of writing your essay much easier.

A good conclusion should summarize the main points of the article, explain how to approach writing the final version, and reiterate why the content was important. To conclude your essay, start by summarizing the arguments and ideas that you presented throughout your paper. Then, move on to discussing why you chose to write the essay and the importance of studying the book. Finally, provide a brief statement that sums up the main points of the essay.

When writing the final version of your essay, there are some key points to keep in mind. First, proofread your work for any typos or errors. Make sure to properly cite any quotes or references that you used in your essay. Finally, consider having a peer review your essay to get another perspective and catch any mistakes that you might have missed.

Writing an essay on a book can be a rewarding experience when done correctly. The most important part of the process is to fully understand the material and the prompt. By following the steps outlined in this article and taking the time to research and plan, you can write an effective essay on a book.

Nick Radlinsky

Nick Radlinsky is a devoted educator, marketing specialist, and management expert with more than 15 years of experience in the education sector. After obtaining his business degree in 2016, Nick embarked on a quest to achieve his PhD, driven by his commitment to enhancing education for students worldwide. His vast experience, starting in 2008, has established him as a reputable authority in the field.

Nick's article, featured in Routledge's " Entrepreneurship in Central and Eastern Europe: Development through Internationalization ," highlights his sharp insights and unwavering dedication to advancing the educational landscape. Inspired by his personal motto, "Make education better," Nick's mission is to streamline students' lives and foster efficient learning. His inventive ideas and leadership have contributed to the transformation of numerous educational experiences, distinguishing him as a true innovator in his field.

Visual Arts IA Topics: The Best Topic Ideas

In the vast world of art, the possibilities for your IA topic are nearly limitless. Yet, this abundance of choice can sometimes feel overwhelming. Whether you’re drawn to traditional painting techniques, the avant-garde movements of the 20th century, or the intersection of digital media and art, your chosen topic should ignite a spark of curiosity and passion within you.

Theatre IA Topics: SL and HL Topic Ideas

Choosing the right topic for IA in the IB Theatre course is a crucial step that significantly influences your research process and overall learning experience. Whether in the Standard Level or Higher Level track, selecting your topic requires careful thought and consideration, aiming to balance personal interest with academic rigor. This guide offers a rich array of topic ideas and research questions to spark your creativity and intellectual curiosity in the vast world of theatre.

Music IA Topics for SL and HL Students

When selecting a topic for your IB Music Internal Assessment, both SL and HL students face a unique set of challenges and opportunities. As a seasoned IB educator with years of experience guiding students through this process, I’ve come to recognize the importance of choosing a topic that aligns with the IB criteria and resonates with your musical interests and strengths.

Film IA Topics: SL and HL Topic Ideas

Choosing a topic for your IB Film Internal Assessment (IA) can be exciting and daunting. Whether you’re enrolled in the Standard Level (SL) or Higher Level (HL), the key is to select an option that not only intrigues you but also meets the criteria of the IB Film course. In this article, we dig into a variety of creative and thought-provoking ideas for both SL and HL Film IA topics.

IB Dance IA Topics: SL and HL Ideas

When it comes to the IB Dance Internal Assessment (IA), students face the exciting challenge of exploring a topic that resonates with their interests and meets the academic rigor of the IB curriculum. I’ve seen how choosing the right topic can set the stage for an enriching learning experience. In this article, I’m thrilled to share some engaging topic ideas for both SL and HL students aimed at sparking creativity and intellectual curiosity.

Mathematics: Analysis and Approaches IA Topics

Writing the Internal Assessment (IA) for IB Mathematics: Analysis and Approaches is a crucial step for any IB student, combining challenge and opportunity in equal measure. This article highlights the diverse and intriguing IA topics available to Standard Level (SL) and Higher Level (HL) students, helping them to use their mathematical skills in creative and meaningful ways.

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Comprehensive Guide on How to Write an Essay About a Book

Essays are very common in middle school, high school, and college. Even after graduating college, you may need to write essays in the business world in the form of reports. However, writing an essay about a book takes a slightly different turn. It usually involves writing a detailed summary of the plot of a book or a simple book review.

This writing process may seem as simple as sitting down at the computer and beginning to type for some. But a lot more planning goes into writing a book essay successfully. If you have never written one before or struggle with talking about a book in an essay, you should read on.

In this article, we’ll provide a comprehensive guide on how to write essays on books and give you some important steps in the essay writing process.

How to start an essay about a book

A book essay involves closely studying a text, interpreting its themes, and exploring why the author makes certain choices. It can be applied to novels, plays, short stories, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

Book essays aren’t merely book summaries. They can be a form of argumentative essay where you need to analyse the text’s perspective, language, and structure. They also explain how an author uses literary terms and elements to create emotional effects and convey ideas.

Before starting a book essay, it’s vital to carefully read the book and develop a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, you should follow the standard structure of a professional essay. Seeking professional guidance for your college application? Consider enlisting expert assistance to Write You College Essay and increase your chances of admission success.

It should take this structure:

An introduction that gives the reader an idea of what your essay will focus on.
The main body, which is divided into paragraphs that develop an argument using the text’s ideas.
A conclusion that summarises the main ideas you have given with your analysis.

Mentioning a book in an essay

Writing a book essay is not as easy as it may seem, especially when you are not sure how to write a book title in an essay. Some of the questions that most students ask include; Can I use quotation marks? Should I underline the book title? Will I use italics? Does the format depend on the referencing of the paper?

Every question highlighted is essential in learning how to mention a book in an essay. However, it is important to know that different writing styles have varying writing standards.

The style used to write a title of a book in an essay varies based on the formatting style of the paper. There are the APA, MLA, and Chicago writing styles.

Let’s take the example of an APA format.

The rules that apply to an APA format are different from those used in MLA and Chicago writing formats. Here are some of them:

Capitalise the first word and every word with more than four letters
For two-part hyphenated words, capitalization of both words is necessary
Words after dash or colon should also be capitalised
Use quotation marks instead of italics for reference material such as dictionaries.
Use italics for titles of Books, Films, Videos, journals, magazines, newspapers, and TV shows.

Learning the different book title writing styles for each paper format is very important, especially when writing a college essay about a book.

How to write an essay about a book

Writing a book essay can be tricky, so here are the steps that will guide you:

Read the book and locate literary devices

The first step is to read the book and take notes carefully. As you read, pay attention to the main points of the story. For instance, you can take note of things that are intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in writing. These usually form the basis of your analysis.

To begin your analysis, there are many key areas that you can focus on. As you analyse each element of the text, try to think about how they all connect.

Generate a thesis

Your thesis in a book essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s usually the main argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from being a collection of random observations about a book. If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must directly relate to the prompt.

Write a title and introduction

To start your book essay, you’ll need a good title and an introduction.

The title should indicate what your analysis will focus on. It generally contains the author’s name and the book you’re analysing. Keep it as brief and interesting as you can.

Your essay introduction should provide a brief outlook of where your argument is going. It should contain your thesis statement and an outline of the essay’s structure.

Write the body

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic or argument of your book essay. Don’t try to add everything you can think about the text, but only key analysis that fuels your argument.

Write your conclusion

The conclusion of your analysis should wrap up the essay and summarise your key points while emphasising their significance to the reader. To achieve this, briefly summarise your key arguments, and locate the conclusion they’ve led you to.

Unlike regular essays, writing a book essay requires adherence to more rules and writing formats. You should always comprehensively read the book you want to write an essay about and follow a given writing style.

If you are writing in a new discipline, you should always make sure to ask about conventions and expectations for introductions, just as you would for any other aspect of the essay. For example, while it may be acceptable to write a two-paragraph (or longer) introduction for your papers in some courses, instructors in other disciplines, such as those in some Government courses, may expect a shorter introduction that includes a preview of the argument that will follow.
In some disciplines (Government, Economics, and others), it’s common to offer an overview in the introduction of what points you will make in your essay. In other disciplines, you will not be expected to provide this overview in your introduction.
Avoid writing a very general opening sentence. While it may be true that “Since the dawn of time, people have been telling love stories,” it won’t help you explain what’s interesting about your topic.
Avoid writing a “funnel” introduction in which you begin with a very broad statement about a topic and move to a narrow statement about that topic. Broad generalizations about a topic will not add to your readers’ understanding of your specific essay topic.
Avoid beginning with a dictionary definition of a term or concept you will be writing about. If the concept is complicated or unfamiliar to your readers, you will need to define it in detail later in your essay. If it’s not complicated, you can assume your readers already know the definition.
Avoid offering too much detail in your introduction that a reader could better understand later in the paper.
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How to Write an Essay about a Novel – Step by Step Guide

Writing about literature used to scare the heck out of me. I really couldn’t wrap my mind around analyzing a novel. You have the story. You have the characters. But so what? I had no idea what to write.

Luckily, a brilliant professor I had as an undergrad taught me how to analyze a novel in an essay. I taught this process in the university and as a tutor for many years. It’s simple, and it works. And in this tutorial, I’ll show it to you. So, let’s go!

Writing an essay about a novel or any work of fiction is a 6-step process. Steps 1-3 are the analysis part. Steps 4-6 are the writing part.

Step 1. create a list of elements of the novel .

Ask yourself, “What are the elements of this book?”

Well, here is a list of elements present in any work of fiction, any novel:

Here is a table of literary elements along with their descriptions.

In this step, you simply pick 3-6 elements from the list I just gave you and arrange them as bullet points. You just want to make sure you pick elements that you are most familiar or comfortable with.

For example, you can create the following list:

This is just for you to capture the possibilities of what you can write about. It’s a very simple and quick step because I already gave you a list of elements.

Step 2. Pick 3 elements you are most comfortable with

In this step, we’ll use what I call The Power of Three . You don’t need more than three elements to write an excellent essay about a novel or a book.

Just pick three from the list you just created with which you are most familiar or that you understand the best. These will correspond to three sections in your essay.

If you’re an English major, you’ll be a lot more familiar with the term “metaphor” than if you major in Accounting.

But even if you’re a Math major, you are at least probably already familiar with what a story or a character is. And you’ve probably had a takeaway or a lesson from stories you’ve read or seen on screen.

Just pick what you can relate to most readily and easily.

For example, you can pick Characters , Symbols , and Takeaways . Great!

You Can Also Pick Examples of an Element

Let’s say that you are really unfamiliar with most of the elements. In that case, you can just pick one and then list three examples of it.

For example, you can pick the element of Characters . And now all you need to do is choose three of the most memorable characters. You can do this with many of the elements of a novel.

You can pick three themes , such as Romance, Envy, and Adultery.

You can pick three symbols , such as a rose, a ring, and a boat. These can represent love, marriage, and departure.

Okay, great job picking your elements or examples of them.

For the rest of this tutorial, I chose to write about a novel by Fedor Dostoyevskiy, The Brothers Karamazov. This will be our example.

It is one of the greatest novels ever written. And it’s a mystery novel, too, which makes it fun.

So now, let’s choose either three elements of this novel or three examples of an element. I find that one of the easiest ways to do this is to pick one element – Characters – and three examples of it.

In other words, I’m picking three characters. And the entire essay will be about these three characters.

Now, you may ask, if I write only about the characters, am I really writing an essay about the novel?

And the answer is, Yes. Because you can’t write about everything at once. You must pick something. Pick your battles.

And by doing that, you will have plenty of opportunities to make a statement about the whole novel. Does that make sense?

Just trust the process, and it will all become clear in the next steps.

Let’s pick the three brothers – Alexei, Dmitriy, and Ivan.

And don’t worry – I won’t assume that you have read the book. And I won’t spoil it for you if you’re planning to.

So we have the three brothers. We’re ready to move on to the next step.

Step 3. Identify a relationship among these elements

In this step, you want to think about how these three elements that you picked are related to one another.

In this particular case, the three brothers are obviously related because they are brothers. But I want you to dig deeper and see if there is perhaps a theme in the novel that may be connecting the elements.

And, yes, I am using another element – theme – just to help me think about the book. Be creative and use whatever is available to you. It just so happens that religion is a very strong theme in this novel.

What do the three brothers have in common?

They have the same father.
Each one has a romantic interest (meaning, a beloved woman).
All three have some kind of a relationship with God.

These are three ways in which the brothers are related to one another. All we need is one type of a relationship among them to write this essay.

This is a religious novel, and yes, some of the characters will be linked to a form of a divinity. In this case, the religion is Christianity.

Note: there are many ways in which you can play with elements of a novel and examples of them. Here’s a detailed video I made about this process:

Let’s see if we can pick the best relationship of those we just enumerated.

They all have the same father.

This relationship is only factual. It is not very interesting in any way. So we move on to the next one.

They all have women they love.

Each brother has a romantic interest, to use a literary term. We can examine each of the brothers as a lover.

Who is the most fervent lover? Who is perhaps more distant and closed? This is an interesting connecting relationship to explore.

One of them is the most passionate about his woman, but so is another one – I won’t say who so I don’t spoil the novel for you. The third brother seems rather intellectual about his love interest.

So, romantic interest is a good candidate for a connecting relationship. Let’s explore the next connection candidate.

They all relate to God in one way or another.

Let’s see if we can put the brothers’ relationships with God in some sort of an order. Well, Alexei is a monk in learning. He lives at the monastery and studies Christianity. He is the closest to God.

Dmitriy is a believer, but he is more distant from God due to his passionate affair with his woman. He loses his head many times and does things that are ungodly, according to the author. So, although he is a believer, he is more distant from God than is Alexei.

Finally, Ivan is a self-proclaimed atheist. Therefore, he is the farthest away from God.

It looks like we got ourselves a nice sequence, or progression, which we can probably use to write this essay about this novel.

What is the sequence? The sequence is:

Alexei is the closest to God, Dmitriy is second closest, and Ivan is pretty far away.

It looks like we have a pattern here.

If we look at the brothers in the book and watch their emotions closely, we’ll come to the conclusion that they go from blissful to very emotionally unstable to downright miserable to the point of insanity.

Here’s the conclusion we must make:

The closer the character’s relationship with God, the happier he is, and the farther away he is from God, the more miserable he appears to be.

Wow. This is quite a conclusion. It looks like we have just uncovered one of Dostoyevskiy’s main arguments in this novel, if not the main point he is trying to make.

Now that we’ve identified our three elements (examples) and a strong connecting relationship among them, we can move on to Step 4.

Step 4. Take a stand and write your thesis statement

Now we’re ready to formulate our thesis statement. It consists of two parts:

Your Thesis (your main argument)
Your Outline of Support (how you plan to support your main point)

By now, we have everything we need to write a very clear and strong thesis statement.

First, let’s state our thesis as clearly and succinctly as possible, based on what we already know:

See how clear this is? And most importantly, this is clear not only to the reader, but also to you as the writer. Now you know exactly what statement you will be supporting in the body of the essay.

Are we finished with the thesis statement? Not yet. The second part consists of your supporting points. And again, we have everything we need to write it. Let’s do it.

“Alexei’s state of mind is ultimately blissful, because he is a true and observant believer. Dmitriy’s faith is upstaged by his passion for a woman, and he suffers a lot as a result. Ivan’s renunciation of God makes him the unhappiest of the brothers and eventually leads him to insanity.”

Guess what – we have just written our complete thesis statement. And it’s also our whole first paragraph.

We are ready for Step 5.

Step 5. Write the body of the essay

Again, just like in the previous step, you have everything you need to structure and write out the body of this essay.

How many main sections will this essay have? Because we are writing about three brothers, it only makes sense that our essay will have three main sections.

Each section may have one or more paragraphs. So, here’s an important question to consider:

How many words or pages do you have to write?

Let’s say your teacher or professor wants you to write 2,000 words on this topic. Then, here is your strategic breakdown:

Thesis Statement (first paragraph) = 100 words
Conclusion (last paragraph) = 100 words
Body of the Essay = 1,800 words

Let me show you how easy it is to subdivide the body of the essay into sections and subsections.

We already know that we have three sections. And we need 1,800 words total for the body. This leads us to 600 words per main section (meaning, per brother).

Can we subdivide further? Yes, we can. And we should.

When discussing each of the brothers, we connect two subjects: his relationship with God AND his psychological state. That’s how we make those connections.

So, we should simply subdivide each section of 600 words into two subsections of 300 words each. And now all we need to do is to write each part as if it were a standalone 300-word essay.

Does this make sense? See how simple and clear this is?

Writing Your Paragraphs

Writing good paragraphs is a topic for an entire article of its own. It is a science and an art.

In essence, you start your paragraph with a good lead sentence in which you make one point. Then, you provide reasons, explanations, and examples to support it.

Here is an article I wrote on how to write great paragraphs .

Once you’ve written the body of the essay, one last step remains.

Step 6. Add an introduction and a conclusion

Introductions and conclusions are those little parts of an essay that your teachers and professors will want you to write.

Introduction

In our example, we already have a full opening paragraph going. It’s our thesis statement.

To write an introduction, all you need to do is add one or two sentences above the thesis statement.

Here is our thesis statement:

“In his novel Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevskiy describes a world in which happiness is directly proportional to proximity to God. The closer to God a character is, the happier and more emotionally stable he is, and vice versa. Alexei’s state of mind is ultimately blissful, because he is a true and observant believer. Dmitriy’s faith is upstaged by his passion for a woman, and he suffers a lot as a result. Ivan’s renunciation of God makes him the unhappiest of the brothers and eventually leads him to insanity.”

As you can see, it is a complete paragraph that doesn’t lack anything. But because we need to have an introduction, here is a sentence with which we can open this paragraph:

“Dostoyevskiy is a great Russian novelist who explores the theme of religion in many of his books.”

And then just proceed with the rest of the paragraph. Read this sentence followed by the thesis statement, and you see that it works great. And it took me about 30 seconds to write this introductory sentence.

You can write conclusions in several different ways. But the most time-proven way is to simply restate your thesis.

If you write your thesis statement the way I teach, you will have a really strong opening paragraph that can be easily reworded to craft a good conclusion.

Here is an article I wrote (which includes a video) on how to write conclusions .

Congratulations!

You’ve made it to the end, and now you know exactly how to write an essay about a novel or any work of fiction!

Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.

Learn the Basics of Crafting an Expository Essay about a Book

What is an Expository Essay About a Book?

So what is an expository essay? An expository essay is a type of writing that examines and explains a topic in detail.

Writing an expository essay about a book can be a fun and educational way to explore the meaning of literature. It allows you to analyze the author’s writing style, themes, or various other aspects of a book.

In such an essay, you are expected to choose a particular aspect of a book and write an essay discussing that aspect in detail.

For example , you can write an expository essay about the depiction of authoritarianism in George Orwell's 1984. Similarly, you can choose to discuss any aspect of a book you’ve read.

Now that you know what an expository essay is, let's look at some examples.

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Expository Essay About a Book Examples

To understand expository essays better, let’s take a look at some examples:

Expository Essay About a Book Example

Expository Essay About a Novel

Book Expository Essay Example

Reading these sample essays will help you understand what an expository essay about a book should look like.

Looking for more sample expository essays? Read our expository essay examples blog.

Now that you've read some essays, it's time for you to write one yourself. Let’s move on to the steps for writing your essay about a book.

How To Write An Expository Essay About a Book?

Expository writing requires a few simple steps to ensure your paper is well-structured and engaging.

Here are the steps you should follow to write an effective essay about a book:

Step 1. Read and Analyze the Book Thoroughly

Whether you have been assigned a book by your instructor or have chosen one yourself, you should read it thoroughly.

Before you begin writing your essay, it’s important to do your research. That means reading carefully through the book, taking notes on key aspects of the text, and making observations.

When analyzing a book, you may look for the following aspects:

Prominent themes
Important characters or events in the story
Why the author chose to write the book
How the text relates to its historical context

In short: read, take notes, and make observations.

Here’s a very useful video about how to discuss a book in your writing:

Step 2. Choose a Topic

Once you’ve read and analyzed the book in detail, pick out an interesting aspect you can write about.

Your chosen topic will serve as your essay’s focus and help guide your writing. It could be anything from a character’s development to an in-depth look at the themes or symbols in the book.

In addition to writing about a book, there are many other expository essay topics for you to explore.

Step 3. Outline Your Essay

Before diving into your essay, it’s important to create an expository essay outline that will serve as your roadmap. An expository essay commonly consists of five paragraphs, often referred to as the "five-paragraph essay" structure.

Your outline should contain:

Start by writing down your main points and supporting ideas and then organizing them into logical sections. It helps your essay flow logically.

Step 4. Write the First Draft of Your Essay

At this point, you can begin writing your essay.

Use the outline you created to structure your points and support them with evidence from the book. Make sure to remain objective in your analysis, citing facts and examples from the text.

Step 5. Edit & Revise

Once you’ve written your first draft, review it and make any changes or corrections necessary.

Make sure to double-check for grammar and spelling mistakes as well as the accuracy of facts. You may also want to get a second opinion from a friend or teacher before submitting your essay.

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To wrap it up,

Writing an expository essay assignment about a book can be a great way to explore literature.

By following the steps outlined in this blog, you’ll be well on your way to crafting an effective and engaging essay.

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Essays About Reading: 5 Examples And Topic Ideas

As a writer, you love to read and talk to others about reading books. Check out some examples of essays about reading and topic ideas for your essay.

Many people fall in love with good books at an early age, as experiencing the joy of reading can help transport a child’s imagination to new places. Reading isn’t just for fun, of course—the importance of reading has been shown time and again in educational research studies.

If you love to sit down with a good book, you likely want to share your love of reading with others. Reading can offer a new perspective and transport readers to different worlds, whether you’re into autobiographies, books about positive thinking, or stories that share life lessons.

When explaining your love of reading to others, it’s important to let your passion shine through in your writing. Try not to take a negative view of people who don’t enjoy reading, as reading and writing skills are tougher for some people than others.

Talk about the positive effects of reading and how it’s positively benefitted your life. Offer helpful tips on how people can learn to enjoy reading, even if it’s something that they’ve struggled with for a long time. Remember, your goal when writing essays about reading is to make others interested in exploring the world of books as a source of knowledge and entertainment.

Now, let’s explore some popular essays on reading to help get you inspired and some topics that you can use as a starting point for your essay about how books have positively impacted your life.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers

Examples Of Essays About Reading

1. The Book That Changed My Life By The New York Times
2. I Read 150+ Books in 2 Years. Here’s How It Changed My Life By Anangsha Alammyan
3. How My Diagnosis Improved My College Experience By Blair Kenney

4. How ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ Saved Me By Isaac Fitzgerald

5. catcher in the rye: that time a banned book changed my life by pat kelly, topic ideas for essays about reading, 1. how can a high school student improve their reading skills, 2. what’s the best piece of literature ever written, 3. how reading books from authors of varied backgrounds can provide a different perspective, 4. challenging your point of view: how reading essays you disagree with can provide a new perspective, 1. the book that changed my life by the new york times.

“My error the first time around was to read “Middlemarch” as one would a typical novel. But “Middlemarch” isn’t really about plot and dialogue. It’s all about character, as mediated through the wise and compassionate (but sharply astute) voice of the omniscient narrator. The book shows us that we cannot live without other people and that we cannot live with other people unless we recognize their flaws and foibles in ourselves.” The New York Times

In this collection of reader essays, people share the books that have shaped how they see the world and live their lives. Talking about a life-changing piece of literature can offer a new perspective to people who tend to shy away from reading and can encourage others to pick up your favorite book.

2. I Read 150+ Books in 2 Years. Here’s How It Changed My Life By Anangsha Alammyan

“Consistent reading helps you develop your analytical thinking skills over time. It stimulates your brain and allows you to think in new ways. When you are actively engaged in what you’re reading, you would be able to ask better questions, look at things from a different perspective, identify patterns and make connections.” Anangsha Alammyan

Alammyan shares how she got away from habits that weren’t serving her life (such as scrolling on social media) and instead turned her attention to focus on reading. She shares how she changed her schedule and time management processes to allow herself to devote more time to reading, and she also shares the many ways that she benefited from spending more time on her Kindle and less time on her phone.

3. How My Diagnosis Improved My College Experience By Blair Kenney

“When my learning specialist convinced me that I was an intelligent person with a reading disorder, I gradually stopped hiding from what I was most afraid of—the belief that I was a person of mediocre intelligence with overambitious goals for herself. As I slowly let go of this fear, I became much more aware of my learning issues. For the first time, I felt that I could dig below the surface of my unhappiness in school without being ashamed of what I might find.” Blair Kenney

Reading does not come easily to everyone, and dyslexia can make it especially difficult for a person to process words. In this essay, Kenney shares her experience of being diagnosed with dyslexia during her sophomore year of college at Yale. She gave herself more patience, grew in her confidence, and developed techniques that worked to improve her reading and processing skills.

“I took that book home to finish reading it. I’d sit somewhat uncomfortably in a tree or against a stone wall or, more often than not, in my sparsely decorated bedroom with the door closed as my mother had hushed arguments with my father on the phone. There were many things in the book that went over my head during my first time reading it. But a land left with neither Rhyme nor Reason, as I listened to my parents fight, that I understood.” Isaac Fitzgerald

Books can transport a reader to another world. In this essay, Fitzgerald explains how Norton Juster’s novel allowed him to escape a difficult time in his childhood through the magic of his imagination. Writing about a book that had a significant impact on your childhood can help you form an instant connection with your reader, as many people hold a childhood literature favorite near and dear to their hearts.

“From the first paragraph my mind was blown wide open. It not only changed my whole perspective on what literature could be, it changed the way I looked at myself in relation to the world. This was heavy stuff. Of the countless books I had read up to this point, even the ones written in first person, none of them felt like they were speaking directly to me. Not really anyway.” Pat Kelly

Many readers have had the experience of feeling like a book was written specifically for them, and in this essay, Kelly shares that experience with J.D. Salinger’s classic American novel. Writing about a book that felt like it was written specifically for you can give you the chance to share what was happening in your life when you read the book and the lasting impact that the book had on you as a person.

There are several topic options to choose from when you’re writing about reading. You may want to write about how literature you love has changed your life or how others can develop their reading skills to derive similar pleasure from reading.

Middle and high school students who struggle with reading can feel discouraged when, despite their best efforts, their skills do not improve. Research the latest educational techniques for boosting reading skills in high school students (the research often changes) and offer concrete tips (such as using active reading skills) to help students grow.

It’s an excellent persuasive essay topic; it’s fun to write about the piece of literature you believe to be the greatest of all time. Of course, much of this topic is a matter of opinion, and it’s impossible to prove that one piece of literature is “better” than another. Write your essay about how the piece of literature you consider the best positive affected your life and discuss how it’s impacted the world of literature in general.

The world is full of many perspectives and points of view, and it can be hard to imagine the world through someone else’s eyes. Reading books by authors of different gender, race, or socioeconomic status can help open your eyes to the challenges and issues others face. Explain how reading books by authors with different backgrounds has changed your worldview in your essay.

It’s fun to read the information that reinforces viewpoints that you already have, but doing so doesn’t contribute to expanding your mind and helping you see the world from a different perspective. Explain how pushing oneself to see a different point of view can help you better understand your perspective and help open your eyes to ideas you may not have considered.

Tip: If writing an essay sounds like a lot of work, simplify it. Write a simple 5 paragraph essay instead.

If you’re stuck picking your next essay topic, check out our round-up of essay topics about education .

Amanda has an M.S.Ed degree from the University of Pennsylvania in School and Mental Health Counseling and is a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer. She has experience writing magazine articles, newspaper articles, SEO-friendly web copy, and blog posts.

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Writing an essay on a book

Dec 4, 2019 | Writing , Essay Writing , Writing guide

It is common knowledge that not every student likes writing. There is a lot that is involved in this task such that the student feels too overwhelmed at times. These students have no other choice but to tow the line and write assignments that will help them to get good grades. One such assignment involves writing an essay about a book. The idea is to give the audience a good opinion of the work such that they can decide to reads it or not. Even though literature is not among the most favorite subjects even in high school, the student is still expected to bring his A-game.

If the assignment requires you to write an essay on book, be ready to go through everything necessary for its success. Think of all the aspects that make the book interesting or not. Follow the author has discussed the various aspects in that piece of literature. It is your prerogative to know how to write an essay on a book, whether you like it or not.

Writing essays on books is a common assignment that you will have to face. As such, you are supposed to take a stand on a given work. You have to analyze it in the bigger context as well as analyze the themes therein. You also have to pay attention to the literary merit of the author. This means you have to read the book severally to understand everything about it. You have to capture what the authority intended to be the primary message of the work. Remember, after reading, it is the only time you can take up a stance on the work. This will help you to formulate an excellent thesis statement to make your writing more focused. This is one of the best techniques you can apply when you want to know how to write an essay for a book.

What you gain from this essay

One of the important things that you can gain from writing essays on a book is that you enhance your understanding of the work. It is also a chance for you to work hard for those good grades that you want. This is an assignment you need to take seriously, as it not only leaves with good grades but also with excellent skills of analyzing a given piece of literature in a better way that you would have before. Henceforth, you will be writing better assignments, whether or not you are reviewing a book or not.

Quick pointers to write a better essay on a book

Before proceeding further, you can take these quick tips that can help you in the first instances. They include the following.

Select a book

If you have not been issued with a book, you can select one and decide to write an essay on it. This should be a book that is interesting to you and by extension, to the audience. However, remember that the audience may or may not have read the book. As such, you should be careful about the details that you divulge here.

Determine the goal for the length

This essay is likely to have a predetermined number of words. As such, you should read the book bearing in mind that you have a limitation on the number of words you can write. As such, be ready with a good strategy that will enable you to write a very competent essay about a book.

Decide the format and the style

If you are lucky enough to choose the format for yourself, choose something that you are familiar with. This will make your work easy because you will have control over everything. On the other hand, if you have been given a format to follow, ensure that you familiarize yourself with it before you even start writing the essays on book.

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Read the assigned book.

The best way to capture the essence of a book as you seek to know how to write an essay on a book is to read the work. You cannot capture the message of the book with the first reading; hove well you are at it. You have to read the work severally, identifying different aspects that make the work stand out or fail in one way or the other. Reading is important, and you should invest time in it. This is the only way you get to write an excellent piece of essay on a book.

Formulate an excellent thesis statement

Remember that this is an academic assignment. As such, you have to follow all the rules. One of the best ways you will make your essays on book focused is to formulate a very strong thesis statement. This thesis statement is based on the content of the book. It is your stance on the work that you are going to defend through the points you discuss. Your thesis statement ought to be a single sentence or two at most. Use it to pitch your idea to the audience and use as much evidence as possible. The best way to defend your thesis statement is to choose memorable direct quotes from the book to back up your stance on the work.

Your thesis must be insightful enough and must have a very clear counter-argument. For instance, if in the book you believe that the protagonist left his lover because of the tragic upbringing and not because of infidelity and are sure that this argument can sustain your essay, you should sate your stance about hat idea. In most cases, thesis statements are written as the last sentences of the introduction paragraph.

With your thesis statement intact, you already have your thoughts organized. You also have a very good approach that you are going to apply when writing essays on a book.

Formulate a good introduction

This is where you start throwing a spanner into the works. One of the best tricks to know how to write an essay for a book is to grab the attention of the audience from the start; your opening sentence should be striking enough to have the audience drooling for more. This is where you give the background of the book as we as its author. Close your introduction with your thesis statement. This will serve as a reminder to the audience of what the work is all about. It is also a transitional way of introducing the audience to the first topic sentence you are going to talk about in the first paragraph of the body.

The body paragraphs

To write excellent body paragraphs for your essays on a book, you have to present all your arguments. These arguments can never be discussed in a single paragraph. You should divide them into points; then make them topic sentences, each of which takes a single paragraph. The work is to ensure that the topic sentence that you formulate relates to your thesis statement. Remember that everything you are writing here must relate to the book that you are analyzing. The evidence that you use per paragraph must come from the book. This can be direct quotes or paraphrases that are duly cited.

The relevance of the points you make relies on how they connect to the central argument. As such, one of the ways to know how to write an essay on a book It ensures that he pieces of evidence and information you use are strong enough to prove your claims about the book, since you are trying to tell the audience if the book is worth it or not, you should be very convincing enough. Analyze, interpret, and present specific themes within the book. It can be themes, character motivations, rising actions, and all other elements of the book that you think will adequately support the central theme of your essay.

This should happen for every paragraph you write. If you have three body paragraphs, ensure they have distinct evidence from the book as support, and by far, they should help you prove what you want the audience to know. Remember that you are trying to give an honest opinion that is based on facts, albeit from your point of view. As such, work hard to defend it.

Using transitions in our work

Another tip of knowing how to write an essay on a book is that you have to use transition. This enhances the flow of your ideas. The audience can follow how you organize your thoughts easily. This not only adds to the readability of your paper but also positions you to get a good grade in the end. The smooth transition from claim to claim makes it easier for the audience to piece all your positions together. They will see the value of your argument. The idea o using transitions is no only used when writing essays on a book, but also in other academic writing tasks. Transitions make your essay more cohesive, thereby achieving its goal easily.

Write your conclusion

This is the last chance you have of making a lasting impression on your audience. It is a time tom wrap the work and ensures that the audience is left with something to think about. The conclusion of your essays on a book allows you to restate your thesis statement. When doing so, you are not necessarily writing it verbatim as it is I the introduction. Some other words that do not negate its meaning in the first place. More so, you can also summarize the points that you have discussed in the body of your essays on book. Emphasize more on the significance of the work. Let the audience know if you are going to recommend it for them. However, the concludes is no to place where you can introduce new evidence or facts or anything else that you ave not discussed on the body of your paper. That would be too much and rightly so because it would go through the readers into confusion.

Revise and edit your work

For you to ensure you have covered everything well in that paper, revise everything. You can go through it to ensure you have covered everything you wanted in it. The idea is to ensure that the paper represents your points well. It is also a way to check whether you have covered all the aspects outlined by your instructor. Rest assured that you would have achieved a very crucial goal of writing a review about a literary work.

As you proofread, look at the grammatical mistakes, punctuation’s as well as the spelling of words, the idea is to ensure that you present a paper that is free of mistakes. Once you are satisfied with your revision and proofreading , you can prepare the final copy of your wok.

Those are the simple points you need to know on how to write an essay for a book. If there are problems with the assignment, you can always trust our online writing services . We shall help you with his assignment and many more. Trust our services and enjoy good grades henceforth.

How to Write Book Titles in Your Essays

3-minute read

26th May 2023

When writing an essay, you’re likely to mention other authors’ works, such as books, papers, and articles. Formatting the titles of these works usually involves using quotation marks or italics.

So how do you write a book title in an essay? Most style guides have a standard for this – be sure to check that first. If you’re unsure, though, check out our guide below.

Italics or Quotation Marks?

As a general rule, you should set titles of longer works in italics , and titles of shorter works go in quotation marks . Longer works include books, journals, TV shows, albums, plays, etc. Here’s an example of a book mention:

Shorter works include poems, articles, chapters of books, episodes of TV shows, songs, etc. If it’s a piece that’s part of a biggHow to Write Book Titles in Your Essayser work, the piece considered a short work:

Exceptions to the Rule

The rule for writing book titles in italics applies specifically to running text . If the book title is standing on its own, as in a heading, there’s no need to italicize it.

Additionally, if the book is part of a larger series and you’re mentioning both the title of the series and that of the individual book, you can consider the book a shorter work. You would set the title of the series in italics and place the book title in quotation marks:

Punctuation in Book Titles

Do you need to apply italics to the punctuation in a book title? The short answer is yes – but only if the punctuation is part of the title:

If the punctuation isn’t part of the title (i.e., the punctuation is part of the sentence containing the title), you shouldn’t include in the italics:

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Summary: Writing Book Titles in Essays

We hope you’ll now feel confident when you’re writing and formatting book titles in your essays. Generally, you should set the title in italics when it’s in running text. Remember, though, to check your style guide. While the standards we’ve covered are the most common, some style guides have different requirements.

And once you finish writing your paper, make sure you send it our way! We’ll make sure any titles are formatted correctly as well as checking your work for grammar, spelling, punctuation, referencing, and more. Submit a free sample to try our service today.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you write the title of a book in a sentence.

Set the title of the book in italics unless the book is part of a larger work (e.g., a book that’s part of a series):

When do you use quotation marks for titles?

Place titles of shorter works or pieces that are contained in a larger work in quotation marks:

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How Should One Read a Book?

Read as if one were writing it.

A painting of a woman reading at a table.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Young Girl Reading , c. 1868. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

At this late hour of the world’s history, books are to be found in almost every room of the house—in the nursery, in the drawing room, in the dining room, in the kitchen. But in some houses they have become such a company that they have to be accommodated with a room of their own—a reading room, a library, a study. Let us imagine that we are now in such a room; that it is a sunny room, with windows opening on a garden, so that we can hear the trees rustling, the gardener talking, the donkey braying, the old women gossiping at the pump—and all the ordinary processes of life pursuing the casual irregular way which they have pursued these many hundreds of years. As casually, as persistently, books have been coming together on the shelves. Novels, poems, histories, memoirs, dictionaries, maps, directories; black letter books and brand new books; books in French and Greek and Latin; of all shapes and sizes and values, bought for purposes of research, bought to amuse a railway journey, bought by miscellaneous beings, of one temperament and another, serious and frivolous, men of action and men of letters.

Now, one may well ask oneself, strolling into such a room as this, how am I to read these books? What is the right way to set about it? They are so many and so various. My appetite is so fitful and so capricious. What am I to do to get the utmost possible pleasure out of them? And is it pleasure, or profit, or what is it that I should seek? I will lay before you some of the thoughts that have come to me on such an occasion as this. But you will notice the note of interrogation at the end of my title. One may think about reading as much as one chooses, but no one is going to lay down laws about it. Here in this room, if nowhere else, we breathe the air of freedom. Here simple and learned, man and woman are alike. For though reading seems so simple—a mere matter of knowing the alphabet—it is indeed so difficult that it is doubtful whether anybody knows anything about it. Paris is the capital of France; King John signed the Magna Charta; those are facts; those can be taught; but how are we to teach people so to read “Paradise Lost” as to see that it is a great poem, or “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” so as to see that it is a good novel? How are we to learn the art of reading for ourselves? Without attempting to lay down laws upon a subject that has not been legalized, I will make a few suggestions, which may serve to show you how not to read, or to stimulate you to think out better methods of your own.

And directly we begin to ask how should one read a book we are faced by the fact that books differ; there are poems, novels, biographies on the book shelf there; each differs from the other as a tiger differs from a tortoise, a tortoise from an elephant. Our attitude must always be changing, it is clear. From different books we must ask different qualities. Simple as this sounds, people are always behaving as if all books were of the same species—as if there were only tortoises or nothing but tigers. It makes them furious to find a novelist bringing Queen Victoria to the throne six months before her time; they will praise a poet enthusiastically for teaching them that a violet has four petals and a daisy almost invariably ten. You will save a great deal of time and temper better kept for worthier objects if you will try to make out before you begin to read what qualities you expect of a novelist, what of a poet, what of a biographer. The tortoise is bald and shiny; the tiger has a thick coat of yellow fur. So books too differ: one has its fur, the other has its baldness.

To be able to read books without reading them, to skip and saunter, to suspend judgment, to lounge and loaf down the alleys and bye-streets of letters is the best way of rejuvenating one’s own creative power.

Yes; but for all that the problem is not so simple in a library as at the Zoölogical Gardens. Books have a great deal in common; they are always overflowing their boundaries; they are always breeding new species from unexpected matches among themselves. It is difficult to know how to approach them, to which species each belongs. But if we remember, as we turn to the bookcase, that each of these books was written by a pen which, consciously or unconsciously, tried to trace out a design, avoiding this, accepting that, adventuring the other; if we try to follow the writer in his experiment from the first word to the last, without imposing our design upon him, then we shall have a good chance of getting hold of the right end of the string.

To read a book well, one should read it as if one were writing it. Begin not by sitting on the bench among the judges but by standing in the dock with the criminal. Be his fellow worker, become his accomplice. Even, if you wish merely to read books, begin by writing them. For this certainly is true—one cannot write the most ordinary little story, attempt to describe the simplest event—meeting a beggar, shall we say, in the street, without coming up against difficulties that the greatest of novelists have had to face. In order that we may realize, however briefly and crudely, the main divisions into which novelists group themselves, let us imagine how differently Defoe, Jane Austen, and Thomas Hardy would describe the same incident—this meeting a beggar in the street. Defoe is a master of narrative. His prime effort will be to reduce the beggar’s story to perfect order and simplicity. This happened first, that next, the other thing third. He will put in nothing, however attractive, that will tire the reader unnecessarily, or divert his attention from what he wishes him to know. He will also make us believe, since he is a master, not of romance or of comedy, but of narrative, that everything that happened is true. He will be extremely precise therefore. This happened, as he tells us on the first pages of” Robinson Crusoe,” on the first of September. More subtly and artfully, he will hypnotize us into a state of belief by dropping out casually some little unnecessary fact—for instance, “my father called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout.” His father’s gout is not necessary to the story, but it is necessary to the truth of the story, for it is thus that anybody who is speaking the truth adds some small irrelevant detail without thinking. Further, he will choose a type of sentence which is flowing but not too full, exact but not epigrammatic. His aim will be to present the thing itself without distortion from his own angle of vision. He will meet the subject face to face, four-square, without turning aside for a moment to point out that this was tragic, or that beautiful; and his aim is perfectly achieved.

But let us not for a moment confuse it with Jane Austen’s aim. Had she met a beggar woman, no doubt she would have been interested in the beggar’s story. But she would have seen at once that for her purposes the whole incident must be transformed. Streets and the open air and adventures mean nothing to her, artistically. It is character that interests her. She would at once make the beggar into a comfortable elderly man of the upper middle classes, seated by his fireside at his ease. Then, instead of plunging into the story vigorously and veraciously, she will write a few paragraphs of accurate and artfully seasoned introduction, summing up the circumstances and sketching the character of the gentleman she wishes us to know. “Matrimony as the origin of change was always disagreeable” to Mr. Woodhouse, she says. Almost immediately, she thinks it well to let us see that her words are corroborated by Mr. Woodhouse himself. We hear him talking. “Poor Miss Taylor!—I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that Mr. Weston ever thought of her.” And when Mr. Woodhouse has talked enough to reveal himself from the inside, she then thinks it time to let us see him through his daughter’s eyes. “You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you mentioned her.” Thus she shows us Emma flattering him and humoring him. Finally then, we have Mr. Woodhouse’s character seen from three different points of view at once; as he sees himself; as his daughter sees him; and as he is seen by the marvellous eye of that invisible lady Jane Austen herself. All three meet in one, and thus we can pass round her characters free, apparently, from any guidance but our own.

Now let Thomas Hardy choose the same theme—a beggar met in the street—and at once two great changes will be visible. The street will be transformed into a vast and sombre heath; the man or woman will take on some of the size and indistinctness of a statue. Further, the relations of this human being will not be towards other people, but towards the heath, towards man as law-giver, towards those powers which are in control of man’s destiny. Once more our perspective will be completely changed. All the qualities which were admirable in “Robinson Crusoe,” admirable in “Emma,” will be neglected or absent. The direct literal statement of Defoe is gone. There is none of the clear, exact brilliance of Jane Austen. Indeed, if we come to Hardy from one of these great writers we shall exclaim at first that he is “melodramatic” or “unreal” compared with them. But we should bethink us that there are at least two sides to the human soul; the light side and the dark side. In company, the light side of the mind is exposed; in solitude, the dark. Both are equally real, equally important. But a novelist will always tend to expose one rather than the other; and Hardy, who is a novelist of the dark side, will contrive that no clear, steady light falls upon his people’s faces, that they are not closely observed in drawing rooms, that they come in contact with moors, sheep, the sky and the stars, and in their solitude are directly at the mercy of the gods. If Jane Austen’s characters are real in the drawing room, they would not exist at all upon the top of Stonehenge. Feeble and clumsy in drawing rooms, Hardy’s people are large-limbed and vigorous out of doors. To achieve his purpose Hardy is neither literal and four-square like Defoe, nor deft and pointed like Jane Austen. He is cumbrous, involved, metaphorical. Where Jane Austen describes manners, he describes nature. Where she is matter of fact, he is romantic and poetical. As both are great artists, each is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective, and will not be found confusing us (as so many lesser writers do) by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book.

Yet it is very difficult not to wish them less scrupulous. Frequent are the complaints that Jane Austen is too prosaic, Thomas Hardy too melodramatic. And we have to remind ourselves that it is necessary to approach every writer differently in order to get from him all he can give us. We have to remember that it is one of the qualities of greatness that it brings heaven and earth and human nature into conformity with its own vision. It is by reason of this masterliness of theirs, this uncompromising idiosyncrasy, that great writers often require us to make heroic efforts in order to read them rightly. They bend us and break us. To go from Jane Austen to Hardy, from Peacock to Trollope, from Scott to Meredith, from Richardson to Kipling, is to be wrenched and distorted, thrown this way and then that. Besides, everyone is born with a natural bias of his own in one direction rather than in another. He instinctively accepts Hardy’s vision rather than Jane Austen’s, and, reading with the current and not against it, is carried on easily and swiftly by the impetus of his own bent to the heart of his author’s genius. But then Jane Austen is repulsive to him. He can scarcely stagger through the desert of her novels.

Sometimes this natural antagonism is too great to be overcome, but trial is always worth making. For these difficult and inaccessible books, with all their preliminary harshness, often yield the richest fruits in the end, and so curiously is the brain compounded that while tracts of literature repel at one season, they are appetizing and essential at another.

If, then, this is true—that books are of very different types, and that to read them rightly we have to bend our imaginations powerfully, first one way, then another—it is clear that reading is one of the most arduous and exhausting of occupations. Often the pages fly before us and we seem, so keen is our interest, to be living and not even holding the volume in our hands. But the more exciting the book, the more danger we run of over-reading. The symptoms are familiar. Suddenly the book becomes dull as ditchwater and heavy as lead. We yawn and stretch and cannot attend. The highest flights of Shakespeare and Milton become intolerable. And we say to ourselves—is Keats a fool or am I?—a painful question, a question, moreover, that need not be asked if we realized how great a part the art of not reading plays in the art of reading. To be able to read books without reading them, to skip and saunter, to suspend judgment, to lounge and loaf down the alleys and bye-streets of letters is the best way of rejuvenating one’s own creative power. All biographies and memoirs, all the hybrid books which are largely made up of facts, serve to restore to us the power of reading real books—that is to say, works of pure imagination. That they serve also to impart knowledge and to improve the mind is true and important, but if we are considering how to read books for pleasure, not how to provide an adequate pension for one’s widow, this other property of theirs is even more valuable and important. But here again one should know what one is after. One is after rest, and fun, and oddity, and some stimulus to one’s own jaded creative power. One has left one’s bare and angular tower and is strolling along the street looking in at the open windows. After solitude and concentration, the open air, the sight of other people absorbed in innumerable activities, comes upon us with an indescribable fascination.

The windows of the houses are open; the blinds are drawn up. One can see the whole household without their knowing that they are being seen. One can see them sitting round the dinner table, talking, reading, playing games. Sometimes they seem to be quarrelling—but what about? Or they are laughing—but what is the joke? Down in the basement the cook is reading a newspaper aloud, while the housemaid is making a piece of toast; in comes the kitchen maid and they all start talking at the same moment—but what are they saying? Upstairs a girl is dressing to go to a party. But where is she going? There is an old lady sitting at her bedroom window with some kind of wool work in her hand and a fine green parrot in a cage beside her. And what is she thinking? All this life has somehow come together; there is a reason for it; a coherency in it, could one but seize it. The biographer answers the innumerable questions which we ask as we stand outside on the pavement looking in at the open window. Indeed there is nothing more interesting than to pick one’s way about among these vast depositories of facts, to make up the lives of men and women, to create their complex minds and households from the extraordinary abundance and litter and confusion of matter which lies strewn about. A thimble, a skull, a pair of scissors, a sheaf of sonnets, are given us, and we have to create, to combine, to put these incongruous things together. There is, too, a quality in facts, an emotion which comes from knowing that men and women actually did and suffered these things, which only the greatest novelists can surpass. Captain Scott, starving and freezing to death in the snow, affects us as deeply as any made-up story of adventure by Conrad or Defoe; but it affects us differently. The biography differs from the novel. To ask a biographer to give us the same kind of pleasure that we get from a novelist is to misuse and misread him. Directly he says “John Jones was born at five-thirty in the morning of August 13, I 862,” he has committed himself, focussed his lens upon fact, and if he then begins to romance, the perspective becomes blurred, we grow suspicious, and our faith in his integrity as a writer is destroyed. In the same way fact destroys fiction. If Thackeray, for example, had quoted an actual newspaper account of the Battle of Waterloo in “Vanity Fair,” the whole fabric of his story would have been destroyed, as a stone destroys a bubble.

But it is undoubted that these hybrid books, these warehouses and depositories of facts, play a great part in resting the brain and restoring its zest of imagination. The work of building up a life for oneself from skulls, thimbles, scissors, and sonnets stimulates our interest in creation and rouses our wish to see the work beautifully and powerfully done by a Flaubert or a Tolstoi. Moreover, however interesting facts may be, they are an inferior form of fiction, and gradually we become impatient of their weakness and diffuseness, of their compromises and evasions, of the slovenly sentences which they make for themselves, and are eager to revive ourselves with the greater intensity and truth of fiction.

It is necessary to have in hand an immense reserve of imaginative energy in order to attack the steeps of poetry. Here are none of those gradual introductions, those resemblances to the familiar world of daily life with which the novelist entices us into his world of imagination. All is violent, opposite, unrelated. But various causes, such as bad books, the worry of carrying on life efficiently, the intermittent but powerful shocks dealt us by beauty, and the incalculable impulses of our own minds and bodies frequently put us into that state of mind in which poetry is a necessity. The sight of a crocus in a garden will suddenly bring to mind all the spring days that have ever been. One then desires the general, not the particular; the whole, not the detail; to turn uppermost the dark side of the mind; to be in contact with silence, solitude, and all men and women and not this particular Richard, or that particular Anne. Metaphors are then more expressive than plain statements.

Thus in order to read poetry rightly, one must be in a rash, an extreme, a generous state of mind in which many of the supports and comforts of literature are done without. Its power of make-believe, its representative power, is dispensed with in favor of its extremities and extravagances. The representation is often at a very far remove from the thing represented, so that we have to use all our energies of mind to grasp the relation between, for example, the song of a nightingale and the image and ideas which that song stirs in the mind. Thus reading poetry often seems a state of rhapsody in which rhyme and metre and sound stir the mind as wine and dance stir the body, and we read on, understanding with the senses, not with the intellect, in a state of intoxication. Yet all this intoxication and intensity of delight depend upon the exactitude and truth of the image, on its being the counterpart of the reality within. Remote and extravagant as some of Shakespeare’s images seem, far-fetched and ethereal as some of Keats’s, at the moment of reading they seem the cap and culmination of the thought; its final expression. But it is useless to labor the matter in cold blood. Anyone who has read a poem with pleasure will remember the sudden conviction, the sudden recollection (for it seems sometimes as if we were about to say, or had in some previous existence already said, what Shakespeare is actually now saying), which accompany the reading of poetry, and give it its exaltation and intensity. But such reading is attended, whether consciously or unconsciously, with the utmost stretch and vigilance of the faculties, of the reason no less than of the imagination. We are always verifying the poet’s statements, making a flying comparison, to the best of our powers, between the beauty he makes outside and the beauty we are aware of within. For the humblest among us is endowed with the power of comparison. The simplest (provided he loves reading) has that already within him to which he makes what is given him—by poet or novelist—correspond.

With that saying, of course, the cat is out of the bag. For this admission that we can compare, discriminate, brings us to this further point. Reading is not merely sympathizing and understanding; it is also criticizing and judging. Hitherto our endeavor has been to read books as a writer writes them. We have been trying to understand, to appreciate, to interpret, to sympathize. But now, when the book is finished, the reader must leave the dock and mount the bench. He must cease to be the friend; he must become the judge. And this is no mere figure of speech. The mind seems (“seems,” for all is obscure that takes place in the mind) to go through two processes in reading. One might be called the actual reading; the other the after reading. During the actual reading, when we hold the book in our hands, there are incessant distractions and interruptions. New impressions are always completing or cancelling the old. One’s judgment is suspended, for one does not know what is coming next. Surprise, admiration, boredom, interest, succeed each other in such quick succession that when, at last, the end is reached, one is for the most part in a state of complete bewilderment. Is it good? or bad? What kind of book is it? How good a book is it? The friction of reading and the emotion of reading beat up too much dust to let us find clear answers to these questions. If we are asked our opinion, we cannot give it. Parts of the book seem to have sunk away, others to be starting out in undue prominence. Then perhaps it is better to take up some different pursuit—to walk, to talk, to dig, to listen to music. The book upon which we have spent so much time and thought fades entirely out of sight. But suddenly, as one is picking a snail from a rose, tying a shoe, perhaps, doing something distant and different, the whole book floats to the top of the mind complete. Some process seems to have been finished without one’s being aware of it. The different details which have accumulated in reading assemble themselves in their proper places. The book takes on a definite shape; it becomes a castle, a cowshed, a gothic ruin, as the case may be. Now one can think of the book as a whole, and the book as a whole is different, and gives one a different emotion, from the book received currently in several different parts. Its symmetry and proportion, its confusion and distortion can cause great delight or great disgust apart from the pleasure given by each detail as it is separately realized. Holding this complete shape in mind it now becomes necessary to arrive at some opinion of the book’s merits, for though it is possible to receive the greatest pleasure and excitement from the first process, the actual reading, though this is of the utmost importance, it is not so profound or so lasting as the pleasure we get when the second process—the after reading—is finished, and we hold the book clear, secure, and (to the best of our powers) complete in our minds.

But how, we may ask, are we to decide any of these questions—is it good, or is it bad?—how good is it, how bad is it? Not much help can be looked for from outside. Critics abound; criticisms pullulate; but minds differ too much to admit of close correspondence in matters of detail, and nothing is more disastrous than to crush one’s own foot into another person’s shoe. When we want to decide a particular case, we can best help ourselves, not by reading criticism, but by realizing our own impression as acutely as possible and referring this to the judgments which we have gradually formulated in the past. There they hang in the wardrobe of our mind—the shapes of the books we have read, as we hung them up and put them away when we had done with them. If we have just read “Clarissa Harlowe,” for example, let us see how it shows up against the shape of “Anna Karenina.” At once the outlines of the two books are cut out against each other as a house with its chimneys bristling and its gables sloping is cut out against a harvest moon. At once Richardson’s qualities—his verbosity, his obliqueness—are contrasted with Tolstoi’s brevity and directness. And what is the reason of this difference in their approach? And how does our emotion at different crises of the two books compare? And what must we attribute to the eighteenth century, and what to Russia and the translator? But the questions which suggest themselves are innumerable. They ramify infinitely, and many of them are apparently irrelevant. Yet it is by asking them and pursuing the answers as far as we can go that we arrive at our standard of values, and decide in the end that the book we have just read is of this kind or of that, has merit in that degree or in this. And it is now, when we have kept closely to our own impression, formulated independently our own judgment, that we can most profitably help ourselves to the judgments of the great critics—Dryden, Johnson, and the rest. It is when we can best defend our own opinions that we get most from theirs.

So, then—to sum up the different points we have reached in this essay—have we found any answer to our question, how should we read a book? Clearly, no answer that will do for everyone; but perhaps a few suggestions. In the first place, a good reader will give the writer the benefit of every doubt; the help of all his imagination; will follow as closely, interpret as intelligently as he can. In the next place, he will judge with the utmost severity. Every book, he will remember, has the right to be judged by the best of its kind. He will be adventurous, broad in his choice, true to his own instincts, yet ready to consider those of other people. This is an outline which can be filled, in at taste and at leisure, but to read something after this fashion is to be a reader whom writers respect. It is by the means of such readers that masterpieces are helped into the world.

If the moralists ask us how we can justify our love of reading, we can make use of some such excuse as this. But if we are honest, we know that no such excuse is needed. It is true that we get nothing whatsoever except pleasure from reading; it is true that the wisest of us is unable to say what that pleasure may be. But that pleasure—mysterious, unknown, useless as it is—is enough. That pleasure is so curious, so complex, so immensely fertilizing to the mind of anyone who enjoys it, and so wide in its effects, that it would not be in the least surprising to discover, on the day of judgment when secrets are revealed and the obscure is made plain, that the reason why we have grown from pigs to men and women, and come out from our caves, and dropped our bows and arrows, and sat round the fire and talked and drunk and made merry and given to the poor and helped the sick and made pavements and houses and erected some sort of shelter and society on the waste of the world, is nothing but this: we have loved reading.

Rachel Cusk

Renaissance women, fady joudah, you might also like, september twilight, the tolstoyans, thirty clocks strike the hour, join a conversation 200 years in the making..

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Hints On Writing Persuasive Essays About Books

Read about effective ways to create an effective persuasive essay about an exciting piece of literature you have read and convince your audience that it is worth reading.

How to write an essay on a book?

Writing a persuasive essay has a purpose of encouraging readers to accept a particular point of view or to act in a certain way.

Persuasive essays about books are common assignments for high-school and college students that should be based on analyzing themes (big picture ideas from stories which can be applied to real life) and explaining author’s literary merit (specific techniques used to achieve goals).

Working on a book review essay, writers have to take a stand and build a strong argument to win over readers. The key to the success of your writing is demonstrating sound logic and having relevant factual evidence to support the argument.

Not sure how to write a paper on a book? Follow these easy 5 steps.

Create a specific and robust thesis statement . Think about the arguments you will include for supporting your statement. Find good examples in the text of a novel or a short story that illustrate and enhance your position, choose memorable direct quotes to back up your stance.
Organize your thoughts . Brainstorm ideas and plan your essay on a book. Think about the structure of your paper and make a practical outline – the foundation upon which you will create the content. Your project should consist of 3 main parts: an introduction, main body, and conclusion.
Write an introduction . Start your paper with a hook to grab readers’ attention: a question, memorable quote or anecdote. Provide some background information about a book and its author and introduce a clear thesis statement that reveals your position and outlines your argument.
Write body paragraphs . Present all arguments to support the thesis. Each paragraph should present a specific point. Start each paragraph with a topic sentence, stating the central point of the paragraph. Give an explanation to make it more specific. Then present several pieces of evidence to support it and explain why you use it. Justify all claims with specific examples from the text. Include direct quotes if necessary. When using quotes, make sure to cite them correctly. Share the feelings that the book made you feel. Provide comparisons with similar stories or novels. Tell about strengths and weaknesses. End every paragraph with a concluding sentence that sums up what you have discussed. Use smooth transitions from paragraph to paragraph to create a whole, cohesive piece.
Write a conclusion . Wrap up your ideas to leave readers with a strong impression. Restate the thesis and supporting points. Summarize your opinion and evaluate a literary work as a whole. Emphasize its significance. Tell the audience whether you recommend this literary piece.
Revise and edit your paper . Review your essay, modify and reorganize the ideas to make it the best it can be. Improve style and clarity. Correct grammar and spelling mistakes.

How to persuade someone to read a book?

Reading is a priceless activity that gives people incomparable pleasure. Books expand our knowledge of the world and stay fantastic sources of inspiration. But, unfortunately, not all people are fond of reading. This habit is declining mainly due to the growth of technology.

Besides, there are too many distractions.

Wondering how to persuade someone to read a book? Logics and good reasons are genuinely important when you persuade someone. Still, there are special literary persuasive techniques that can be used to present ideas in a convincing manner.

Here are some of them.

Storytelling . People understand complex concepts and abstractions better when those are told through stories.
Repetition . Ads and commercials prove that repetition really works. People can’t agree with you if they don’t get what you are talking about. Say the same thing in different ways and make it easier for your readers to understand your point of view and agree with it.
Appeal to emotions. Making readers feel happy, angry or sad can help persuade them to take action or agree with your viewpoint.
Figurative language . Metaphors, similes, analogies, comparisons can paint a picture for an audience and will help you convince other people to see things your way.

Use our tips on how to write an essay about a book to create an impressive persuasive paper that can convince your friends to read more and benefit from it.

Don’t have the inspiration to write the essay about book? Well, our writers strive to help you out! Order a perfect essay and enjoy reading your favourite book!

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Morgan Parker Says ‘Poetry Is Under Everything’ She Writes

Crafting the arguments in “You Get What You Pay For,” her first essay collection, “felt like pulling apart a long piece of taffy,” says the author of “Magical Negro.”

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What books are on your night stand?

The craft anthology “How We Do It,” edited by the great Jericho Brown, and Shayla Lawson’s astounding “How to Live Free in a Dangerous World.”

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

Probably on the smoking patio of a wine bar at happy hour on a sunny day, with a pencil in my hand and Dorothy Ashby or Ambrose Akinmusire playing through noise-canceling headphones. Or just a quiet morning on my couch with coffee, so engrossed I forget to flip the record.

What’s the last book you read that made you laugh?

“Erasure,” by Percival Everett . I picked up a used copy at Shakespeare & Company recently — after seeing Cord Jefferson’s brilliant adaptation , “American Fiction” — and even on a reread, it made me laugh out loud from the first page.

The last book that made you cry?

Weird or obnoxious if I say my own? Before that, it was probably Y.A.

Do you count any books as guilty pleasures?

That category’s filled to the brim and beyond by reality TV.

How do you organize your books?

Loosely or not at all. This is much to the horror of my Virgo pals, and while I used to take pride in navigating my shelves on familiarity alone, it’s something I’ve vowed to work on. Still, I doubt I’ll ever be an alphabetical type, and clearly I find genre segregation constricting. I do group things thematically, or even interpersonally — music biographies, Black Panthers, Harlem Renaissance; Jessica Hopper is next to John Giorno, and Chase Berggrun’s “R E D” is next to “Dracula”; Julie Buntin’s “Marlena” is beside her husband Gabe Habash’s “Stephen Florida”; Alison C. Rollins is next to her partner Nate Marshall is next to his bestie José Olivarez. At some point Hilton Als’s “White Girls” ended up next to “Male Fantasies,” and I don’t think I’ll ever separate them.

Which genres do you avoid?

There’s an essay in “You Get What You Pay For” where I mention reading a self-help book (as recommended by my now-former psychiatrist). I’d never read one before and have not since.

How does your poetry relate to your essay writing?

The truth is that poetry is under everything. It’s the lyric and sensory backbone. It’s what drives the sound, pace and imagery. (Everyone knows the best prose writers write and read poetry.) But while a poem strives for precision of language, the essay strives for precision of thought, even argument. In a poem, you can build (or approximate) an argument by plopping two images next to each other. It persuades by pointing. Writing these essays felt like pulling apart a long piece of taffy — I found myself reiterating a lot of what I’ve already expressed in poems, so it almost became a project of stretching out each poetic line, breaking down each concept to its root. The process is about asking, pondering, searching — and letting language take part in the answering.

You have a knack for terrific book titles. How did you name your new collection?

Thank you! I love a good title, but I also acknowledge the high bar I have set for myself. With this one, I struggled a bit, I think because it took me a while to understand the book myself, let alone how to introduce it to the world. The essays encompass a lot of seemingly disparate themes and even tonal registers, so framing the overall collection was daunting. I’d been tossing around a couple of options, including “Cheaper Than Therapy,” which appears as an essay title, when Jay-Z made the choice for me. I was in Italy at a residency, grieving the recent loss of my aunt and watching the “Big Pimpin’” video over and over as I worked on an essay about it for the book. I’d left my heavily tabbed copy of “Decoded” at home in Los Angeles, but was scrolling a PDF for details about the video shoot when I came across the line: “If the price is life, then you better get what you paid for.”

You describe yourself as foolish for believing “words could be the pathway to empathy and writing an active resistance against hate.” Might publishing this book change your mind?

Honestly? It’s my only hope.

What’s the last book you recommended to a member of your family?

“Heavy,” by Kiese Laymon, to my mom; Blair LM Kelley’s “ Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class,” to my dad; and “A Is for Activist,” to my 8-month-old cousin.

What do you plan to read next?

Phillip B. Williams’s “Ours” was just published, and I’ve been excited about it for literally years. Vinson Cunningham’s “Great Expectations” came out the same day as my book, so I plan to make that my tour read.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

June Jordan, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin — but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t get just as much fun and fulfillment from a night with Angel Nafis, Danez Smith and Saeed Jones.

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The Cowardice of Guernica

The literary magazine Guernica ’s decision to retract an essay about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals much about how the war is hardening human sentiment.

Listen to this article

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

In the days after October 7, the writer and translator Joanna Chen spoke with a neighbor in Israel whose children were frightened by the constant sound of warplanes. “I tell them these are good booms,” the neighbor said to Chen with a grimace. “I understood the subtext,” Chen wrote later in an essay published in Guernica magazine on March 4, titled “From the Edges of a Broken World.” The booms were, of course, the Israeli army bombing Gaza, part of a campaign that has left at least 30,000 civilians and combatants dead so far.

The moment is just one observation in a much longer meditative piece of writing in which Chen weighs her principles—for years she has volunteered at a charity providing transportation for Palestinian children needing medical care, and works on Arabic and Hebrew translations to bridge cultural divides—against the more turbulent feelings of fear, inadequacy, and split allegiances that have cropped up for her after October 7, when 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage in Hamas’s assault on Israel. But the conversation with the neighbor is a sharp, novelistic, and telling moment. The mother, aware of the perversity of recasting bombs killing children mere miles away as “good booms,” does so anyway because she is a mother, and her children are frightened. The act, at once callous and caring, will stay with me.

Not with the readers of Guernica , though. The magazine , once a prominent publication for fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction, with a focus on global art and politics, quickly found itself imploding as its all-volunteer staff revolted over the essay. One of the magazine’s nonfiction editors posted on social media that she was leaving over Chen’s publication. “Parts of the essay felt particularly harmful and disorienting to read, such as the line where a person is quoted saying ‘I tell them these are good booms.’” Soon a poetry editor resigned as well, calling Chen’s essay a “horrific settler normalization essay”— settler here seeming to refer to all Israelis, because Chen does not live in the occupied territories. More staff members followed, including the senior nonfiction editor and one of the co-publishers (who criticized the essay as “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism”). Amid this flurry of cascading outrage, on March 10 Guernica pulled the essay from its website, with the note: “ Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.” As of today, this explanation is still pending, and my request for comment from the editor in chief, Jina Moore Ngarambe, has gone unanswered.

Read: Beware the language that erases reality

Blowups at literary journals are not the most pressing news of the day, but the incident at Guernica reveals the extent to which elite American literary outlets may now be beholden to the narrowest polemical and moralistic approaches to literature. After the publication of Chen’s essay, a parade of mutual incomprehension occurred across social media, with pro-Palestine writers announcing what they declared to be the self-evident awfulness of the essay (publishing the essay made Guernica “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness,” wrote one of the now-former editors), while reader after reader who came to it because of the controversy—an archived version can still be accessed—commented that they didn’t understand what was objectionable. One reader seemed to have mistakenly assumed that Guernica had pulled the essay in response to pressure from pro-Israel critics. “Oh buddy you can’t have your civilian population empathizing with the people you’re ethnically cleansing,” he wrote, with obvious sarcasm. When another reader pointed out that he had it backwards, he responded, “This chain of events is bizarre.”

Some people saw anti-Semitism in the decision. James Palmer, a deputy editor of Foreign Policy , noted how absurd it was to suggest that the author approved of the “good bombs” sentiment, and wrote that the outcry was “one step toward trying to exclude Jews from discourse altogether.” And it is hard not to see some anti-Semitism at play. One of the resigning editors claimed that the essay “includes random untrue fantasies about Hamas and centers the suffering of oppressors” (Chen briefly mentions the well-documented atrocities of October 7; caring for an Israeli family that lost a daughter, son-in-law, and nephew; and her worries about the fate of Palestinians she knows who have links to Israel).

Madhuri Sastry, one of the co-publishers, notes in her resignation post that she’d earlier successfully insisted on barring a previous essay of Chen’s from the magazine’s Voices on Palestine compilation. In that same compilation, Guernica chose to include an interview with Alice Walker, the author of a poem that asks “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews,” and who once recommended to readers of The New York Times a book that claims that “a small Jewish clique” helped plan the Russian Revolution, World Wars I and II, and “coldly calculated” the Holocaust. No one at Guernica publicly resigned over the magazine’s association with Walker.

However, to merely dismiss all of the critics out of hand as insane or intolerant or anti-Semitic would ironically run counter to the spirit of Chen’s essay itself. She writes of her desire to reach out to those on the other side of the conflict, people she’s worked with or known and who would be angered or horrified by some of the other experiences she relates in the essay, such as the conversation about the “good booms.” Given the realities of the conflict, she knows this attempt to connect is just a first step, and an often-frustrating one. Writing to a Palestinian she’d once worked with as a reporter, she laments her failure to come up with something meaningful to say: “I also felt stupid—this was war, and whether I liked it or not, Nuha and I were standing at opposite ends of the very bridge I hoped to cross. I had been naive … I was inadequate.” In another scene, she notes how even before October 7, when groups of Palestinians and Israelis joined together to share their stories, their goodwill failed “to straddle the chasm that divided us.”

Read: Why activism leads to so much bad writing

After the publication of Chen’s essay, one writer after another pulled their work from the magazine. One wrote, “I will not allow my work to be curated alongside settler angst,” while another, the Texas-based Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah, wrote that Chen’s essay “is humiliating to Palestinians in any time let alone during a genocide. An essay as if a dispatch from a colonial century ago. Oh how good you are to the natives.” I find it hard to read the essay that way, but it would be a mistake, as Chen herself suggests, to ignore such sentiments. For those who more naturally sympathize with the Israeli mother than the Gazan hiding from the bombs, these responses exist across that chasm Chen describes, one that empathy alone is incapable of bridging.

That doesn’t mean empathy isn’t a start, though. Which is why the retraction of the article is more than an act of cowardice and a betrayal of a writer whose work the magazine shepherded to publication. It’s a betrayal of the task of literature, which cannot end wars but can help us see why people wage them, oppose them, or become complicit in them.

Empathy here does not justify or condemn. Empathy is just a tool. The writer needs it to accurately depict their subject; the peacemaker needs it to be able to trace the possibilities for negotiation; even the soldier needs it to understand his adversary. Before we act, we must see war’s human terrain in all its complexity, no matter how disorienting and painful that might be. Which means seeing Israelis as well as Palestinians—and not simply the mother comforting her children as the bombs fall and the essayist reaching out across the divide, but far harsher and more unsettling perspectives. Peace is not made between angels and demons but between human beings, and the real hell of life, as Jean Renoir once noted, is that everybody has their reasons. If your journal can’t publish work that deals with such messy realities, then your editors might as well resign, because you’ve turned your back on literature.

Do you miss being in an English classroom? and I am not talking about the having to take tests and write essays. I mean being able to sit and listen to your teacher and your peers discuss books and to put your heads together to create meaning. Well that is what I am trying to recreate on my Channel. I create videos about books that do more than summarize what happen. I dig deep into plot structure, character development, and the themes of the book. We will discuss meaningful quotes and look at moments in the book that really matter. I love books, and I love talking about books. So come join my community of book lovers and subscribe to this channel.

According to your English Teacher Sam

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Wealth of Geeks

25 Books on Writing Every Writer Needs To Read

Posted: March 15, 2024 | Last updated: March 15, 2024

<p>One of the best ways to improve your writing is by reading. The more you read, the more you’ll learn from other writers who have honed in on their craft. While great writing is a personal and subjective topic, there are books that several agree that every aspiring writer should read at least once. These books will take your writing skills to the next level and teach you how to write like your favorite authors.</p>

One of the best ways to improve your writing is by reading. The more you read, the more you’ll learn from other writers who have honed in on their craft. While great writing is a personal and subjective topic, there are books that several agree that every aspiring writer should read at least once. These books will take your writing skills to the next level and teach you how to write like your favorite authors.

<p>Stephen King is a legendary author known as “The King of Horror.” His books have sold over <a href="https://wordsrated.com/stephen-king-statistics/" rel="nofollow">350 million copies worldwide</a>, and several have been <a href="https://wealthofgeeks.com/best-movies-stephen-kings-works/">made into movies</a>, which is why this book is a must-read for all writers. In this book, King reveals the tools every writer needs to possess to write an enthralling novel. He’s raw, honest, and doesn’t hold back about his struggles within his career. It’s a powerful read that will inspire you to keep working on your craft.</p><p>While the book is written by a fiction writer, the lessons it reveals can be useful to all writers, not just those thinking of crafting their novels. King shares valuable lessons for all writers, like how, as a writer, you will offend some readers, and that’s okay. </p>

1. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Stephen King is a legendary author known as “The King of Horror.” His books have sold over 350 million copies worldwide , and several have been made into movies , which is why this book is a must-read for all writers. In this book, King reveals the tools every writer needs to possess to write an enthralling novel. He’s raw, honest, and doesn’t hold back about his struggles within his career. It’s a powerful read that will inspire you to keep working on your craft.

While the book is written by a fiction writer, the lessons it reveals can be useful to all writers, not just those thinking of crafting their novels. King shares valuable lessons for all writers, like how, as a writer, you will offend some readers, and that’s okay.

<p>Every writer should have a style manual in their repertoire of writing books. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33514.The_Elements_of_Style?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=2mCGaMnp8w&rank=1" rel="nofollow"><em>The Elements of Style</em></a> is a practical guide on writing concisely but engagingly, which every writer will benefit from. William goes over the rules of grammar and other elements of style to teach you how to write effectively in a way that captivates readers.</p><p>In this book, you’ll learn <a href="https://effectiviology.com/writing-tips-from-the-elements-of-style/" rel="nofollow">several life-changing writing tips</a>, such as the importance of active voice, avoiding repetition, and splitting up long sentences to create a piece of writing that flows. No matter what kind of writer you are, these practical tips will guide you in writing strong, concise, and clear sentences.</p>

2. The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.

Every writer should have a style manual in their repertoire of writing books. The Elements of Style is a practical guide on writing concisely but engagingly, which every writer will benefit from. William goes over the rules of grammar and other elements of style to teach you how to write effectively in a way that captivates readers.

In this book, you’ll learn several life-changing writing tips , such as the importance of active voice, avoiding repetition, and splitting up long sentences to create a piece of writing that flows. No matter what kind of writer you are, these practical tips will guide you in writing strong, concise, and clear sentences.

<p>Do you have a novel in the works, or have always dreamt of writing a book but don’t know where to start? If so, this book by William Zinsser is for you. In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53343.On_Writing_Well?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_15" rel="nofollow"><em>On Writing Well</em></a>, Zinsser offers powerful tips and fundamental principles to help you become a great writer. Regardless of the genre you write, these tips will come in handy when you start working on your first draft.</p><p>Zinsser highlights the importance of <a href="https://www.blinkist.com/en/books/on-writing-well-en" rel="nofollow">writing simply and clearly</a>. Instead of trying to use fancy words and heavy sentences filled with overwhelming descriptions, he encourages writers to take a step back and simplify their writing. In this guide, you’ll find insightful examples to draw inspiration from and be encouraged to reflect on the mistakes you could be making as a writer.</p>

3. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide To Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser

Do you have a novel in the works, or have always dreamt of writing a book but don’t know where to start? If so, this book by William Zinsser is for you. In On Writing Well , Zinsser offers powerful tips and fundamental principles to help you become a great writer. Regardless of the genre you write, these tips will come in handy when you start working on your first draft.

Zinsser highlights the importance of writing simply and clearly . Instead of trying to use fancy words and heavy sentences filled with overwhelming descriptions, he encourages writers to take a step back and simplify their writing. In this guide, you’ll find insightful examples to draw inspiration from and be encouraged to reflect on the mistakes you could be making as a writer.

<p>In this funny, honest memoir, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18781363-what-i-wish-i-knew-before-i-moved-to-hollywood?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=2Gfq2hoyC7&rank=2" rel="nofollow">T.R. Locke describes his journey</a> of following his aspirations of being an actor and writer, which he nearly gave up on. He gives insight into how to find happiness while on the journey toward success that will motivate and inspire you. Locke reveals how he nearly left his dream behind to pursue a more stable and comfortable life and what can happen if you take a chance on your dreams.</p><p>If you enjoy reading and learning from real-life experiences, you won’t want to skip out on this book. It’s filled with experiences from real-life singers, screenwriters, directors, and TV stars that reveal the reality of chasing your dreams and working in the creative field. Whether you want to <a href="https://wealthofgeeks.com/how-to-become-a-freelance-writer/">become a freelance writer</a> or dream of writing the next blockbuster hit, you’ll find this book useful and relatable.</p>

4. What I Wish I Knew Before I Moved to Hollywood by T. R. Locke

In this funny, honest memoir, T.R. Locke describes his journey of following his aspirations of being an actor and writer, which he nearly gave up on. He gives insight into how to find happiness while on the journey toward success that will motivate and inspire you. Locke reveals how he nearly left his dream behind to pursue a more stable and comfortable life and what can happen if you take a chance on your dreams.

If you enjoy reading and learning from real-life experiences, you won’t want to skip out on this book. It’s filled with experiences from real-life singers, screenwriters, directors, and TV stars that reveal the reality of chasing your dreams and working in the creative field. Whether you want to become a freelance writer or dream of writing the next blockbuster hit, you’ll find this book useful and relatable.

<p><a href="https://mckeestory.com/" rel="nofollow">Robert McKee</a> is an author and lecturer who holds screenwriting workshops and helps inspire screenwriters to tap into their unlocked potential. His infamous 3-day seminars are popular amongst creatives, and in this book, he shares many of the points and tips he teaches in that seminar. </p><p>He uses his years of experience to explain the fundamental principles of writing that all writers could benefit from. While the book’s title mentions screenwriting, the tips aren’t <a href="https://mckeestory.com/books/story/" rel="nofollow">just for screenwriters</a> but also for journalists, authors, playwrights, and non-fiction writers. As a writer in the field, you’ll learn what makes a good story and what it takes to write one.</p>

5. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee

Robert McKee is an author and lecturer who holds screenwriting workshops and helps inspire screenwriters to tap into their unlocked potential. His infamous 3-day seminars are popular amongst creatives, and in this book, he shares many of the points and tips he teaches in that seminar.

He uses his years of experience to explain the fundamental principles of writing that all writers could benefit from. While the book’s title mentions screenwriting, the tips aren’t just for screenwriters but also for journalists, authors, playwrights, and non-fiction writers. As a writer in the field, you’ll learn what makes a good story and what it takes to write one.

<p>This is an uplifting <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/103761.Zen_in_the_Art_of_Writing?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_21" rel="nofollow">how-to manual</a> for becoming a successful writer. While every writer’s story is different, there’s no denying that you will learn a powerful lesson or two from Ray Bradbury’s inspiring book. Bradbury offers encouraging words on following your instincts and embracing your unique ideas while using his career as a writer of poems, films, plays, and novels.</p><p>Bradbury is an enthusiastic dreamer who encourages you to do the same. He offers solid advice, including writing daily and constantly working on your craft. You’ll gain insight into how to create and feel confident in your voice and style as a writer, which will help you excel in your craft.</p>

6. Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

This is an uplifting how-to manual for becoming a successful writer. While every writer’s story is different, there’s no denying that you will learn a powerful lesson or two from Ray Bradbury’s inspiring book. Bradbury offers encouraging words on following your instincts and embracing your unique ideas while using his career as a writer of poems, films, plays, and novels.

Bradbury is an enthusiastic dreamer who encourages you to do the same. He offers solid advice, including writing daily and constantly working on your craft. You’ll gain insight into how to create and feel confident in your voice and style as a writer, which will help you excel in your craft.

<p><a href="https://nataliegoldberg.com/" rel="nofollow">Natalie Goldberg</a>, a noteworthy author and speaker, blends Zen practices and the art of writing for a unique read. Goldberg believes that writing is a practice no different from meditation, and even if you don’t follow meditation or Buddhist-related practices, you can benefit from the advice in this book.</p><p>Natalie emphasizes the importance of daily practice and honing in on your craft, inspiring you to stay consistent and devoted. She touches on all aspects of writing, <a href="https://nataliegoldberg.com/books/writing-down-the-bones/" rel="nofollow">from getting started</a> and not stopping (don’t cross anything out, just keep writing) to learning to be a better listener to become a better writer.</p>

7. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg , a noteworthy author and speaker, blends Zen practices and the art of writing for a unique read. Goldberg believes that writing is a practice no different from meditation, and even if you don’t follow meditation or Buddhist-related practices, you can benefit from the advice in this book.

Natalie emphasizes the importance of daily practice and honing in on your craft, inspiring you to stay consistent and devoted. She touches on all aspects of writing, from getting started and not stopping (don’t cross anything out, just keep writing) to learning to be a better listener to become a better writer.

<p>Donald Maass, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/87532.Donald_Maass" rel="nofollow">author of over 16 novels</a> and a literary agent, delves into the emotional modes of writing. Writing a story can be intimidating, especially when you need help figuring out where to start. </p><p>Maass goes over the fundamentals of plot and character with emotions that translate through writing. He breaks down how you can use the plot as moments of emotional opportunity, the importance of invoking high emotions, and what makes certain stories so gripping.</p>

8. The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How To Write the Story Beneath the Surface by Donald Maass

Donald Maass, author of over 16 novels and a literary agent, delves into the emotional modes of writing. Writing a story can be intimidating, especially when you need help figuring out where to start.

Maass goes over the fundamentals of plot and character with emotions that translate through writing. He breaks down how you can use the plot as moments of emotional opportunity, the importance of invoking high emotions, and what makes certain stories so gripping.

<p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/authors/16039/stephen-koch" rel="nofollow">Stephen Koch</a>, a novelist, historian, and teacher, taps into his wisdom to offer practical tips to aspiring writers. He explains the entire writing process, from a moment of inspiration to finishing your first draft. His depth of knowledge is powerful and an excellent tool for all types of writers. </p><p>If you ever feel stumped with your writing, this is the book you should reach for. Koch’s encouraging words will inspire you to pick up your pen again and start working on something new or return to that project that took the wind from your sails. </p>

9. The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction by Stephen Koch

Stephen Koch , a novelist, historian, and teacher, taps into his wisdom to offer practical tips to aspiring writers. He explains the entire writing process, from a moment of inspiration to finishing your first draft. His depth of knowledge is powerful and an excellent tool for all types of writers.

If you ever feel stumped with your writing, this is the book you should reach for. Koch’s encouraging words will inspire you to pick up your pen again and start working on something new or return to that project that took the wind from your sails.

<p>If you’re looking for a book that gets into the nitty gritty of writing, this is it. Joe Moran <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38470061-first-you-write-a-sentence?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=iBGKh0q1gi&rank=1" rel="nofollow">provides valuable tips</a> that are straight to the point. You’ll learn about using verbs over nouns, the art of punctuation, and how to write well-crafted, concise sentences. </p><p>Whether you’re struggling to find the right words without sounding too wordy or can’t quite grasp how to structure a proper paragraph, Moran offers his writing wisdom as an unfailing guide. He highlights the importance of using simple, ordinary words that, when used correctly, will help you craft compelling sentences that stick with your readers.</p>

10. First You Write a Sentence.: The Elements of Reading, Writing… and Life by Joe Moran

If you’re looking for a book that gets into the nitty gritty of writing, this is it. Joe Moran provides valuable tips that are straight to the point. You’ll learn about using verbs over nouns, the art of punctuation, and how to write well-crafted, concise sentences.

Whether you’re struggling to find the right words without sounding too wordy or can’t quite grasp how to structure a proper paragraph, Moran offers his writing wisdom as an unfailing guide. He highlights the importance of using simple, ordinary words that, when used correctly, will help you craft compelling sentences that stick with your readers.

<p>Writing characters who express their emotions naturally is a momentous undertaking. If a character is unrelatable or doesn’t express emotions genuinely in a way readers can connect to, your book won’t be as successful as it can be. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43666740-the-emotion-thesaurus?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_21" rel="nofollow"><em>The Emotion Thesaurus</em></a> helps writers convey real emotions through their characters in a way that doesn’t seem forced or exaggerated.</p><p>In this guide, Ackerman explains the importance of natural body language cues, emotion intensity, emotion-related writing challenges, and how to overcome those challenges. If you’re having trouble portraying genuine, raw emotion through your characters, this book will inspire you to move past that mental block and create characters your readers enjoy reading about.</p>

11. The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman

Writing characters who express their emotions naturally is a momentous undertaking. If a character is unrelatable or doesn’t express emotions genuinely in a way readers can connect to, your book won’t be as successful as it can be. The Emotion Thesaurus helps writers convey real emotions through their characters in a way that doesn’t seem forced or exaggerated.

In this guide, Ackerman explains the importance of natural body language cues, emotion intensity, emotion-related writing challenges, and how to overcome those challenges. If you’re having trouble portraying genuine, raw emotion through your characters, this book will inspire you to move past that mental block and create characters your readers enjoy reading about.

<p>Stories shape who we are and how we see the world, and they are vital to our identity. Author and journalist <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/88500.Will_Storr" rel="nofollow">Will Storr</a> will teach you how to master the art of storytelling and take your readers on a journey they won’t forget. </p><p>Storr’s scientific approach to delving deep into what makes stories tick is what sets this book apart from the rest. He uses psychological research and neuroscience to explain how to craft compelling stories that touch those who read them, which you, as a writer, can use to inspire your craft.</p>

12. The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

Stories shape who we are and how we see the world, and they are vital to our identity. Author and journalist Will Storr will teach you how to master the art of storytelling and take your readers on a journey they won’t forget.

Storr’s scientific approach to delving deep into what makes stories tick is what sets this book apart from the rest. He uses psychological research and neuroscience to explain how to craft compelling stories that touch those who read them, which you, as a writer, can use to inspire your craft.

<p>Writers are often their worst critics, with many constantly dealing with self-doubt and imposter syndrome. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53642699-the-mountain-is-you?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_19" rel="nofollow"><em>The Mountain Is You</em></a> looks deeper at self-sabotage, why we do it, and how to stop resisting change and the unknown. If you feel like you’re facing a mental block in your career or limiting self-beliefs stopping you from taking risks, this book is for you.</p><p>West explains how the hardest obstacles we face are often caused by ourselves and how breaking free of certain patterns can open up potentially life-changing opportunities. While the book is not exclusively for writers, it’ll teach those in the profession how to step out of their way, do the necessary internal work, and build the resilience to reach their true potential. </p>

13. The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery by Brianna West

Writers are often their worst critics, with many constantly dealing with self-doubt and imposter syndrome. The Mountain Is You looks deeper at self-sabotage, why we do it, and how to stop resisting change and the unknown. If you feel like you’re facing a mental block in your career or limiting self-beliefs stopping you from taking risks, this book is for you.

West explains how the hardest obstacles we face are often caused by ourselves and how breaking free of certain patterns can open up potentially life-changing opportunities. While the book is not exclusively for writers, it’ll teach those in the profession how to step out of their way, do the necessary internal work, and build the resilience to reach their true potential.

<p>Whether you’re crafting an essay or working on a new novel, writing can be overwhelming at the start. Anne Lamott provides a step-by-step guide for successfully navigating the writing process in this book. She uses her sense of humor and honesty but doesn’t shy away from the darkness and the difficult challenges of life and writing.</p><p>In this book, you’ll learn about the various parts of the storytelling process, including not-so-great first drafts, characters, dialogue, and knowing when you’re finished. It also tackles the obstacles of writer’s block and publication, which she explains with her quick sense of humor for a light and helpful read.</p>

14. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Whether you’re crafting an essay or working on a new novel, writing can be overwhelming at the start. Anne Lamott provides a step-by-step guide for successfully navigating the writing process in this book. She uses her sense of humor and honesty but doesn’t shy away from the darkness and the difficult challenges of life and writing.

In this book, you’ll learn about the various parts of the storytelling process, including not-so-great first drafts, characters, dialogue, and knowing when you’re finished. It also tackles the obstacles of writer’s block and publication, which she explains with her quick sense of humor for a light and helpful read.

<p>All writers can use this powerful personal development book as a tool in their careers. This <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157095669-hidden-potential?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_16" rel="nofollow">compelling book</a> by <a href="https://adamgrant.net/" rel="nofollow">Adam Grant</a>, an American author and professor, explores society’s fascination with high achievers and those born with talent while overlooking the journey some of us must take to be great. </p><p>One of the reasons this book is so inspiring for writers is because it explores how talent can be developed with the proper practices. Writers are constantly working on their craft and improving their writing skills, and Grant expresses just how good we can become through consistent practice. The book explores the importance of growth, strength of character, and the ability to learn as ways to help writers pursue their potential.</p>

15. Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant

All writers can use this powerful personal development book as a tool in their careers. This compelling book by Adam Grant , an American author and professor, explores society’s fascination with high achievers and those born with talent while overlooking the journey some of us must take to be great.

One of the reasons this book is so inspiring for writers is because it explores how talent can be developed with the proper practices. Writers are constantly working on their craft and improving their writing skills, and Grant expresses just how good we can become through consistent practice. The book explores the importance of growth, strength of character, and the ability to learn as ways to help writers pursue their potential.

<p>Have you ever wondered why we write stories and what makes us so enthralled with them? John Yorke is a <a href="https://www.johnyorkestory.com/" rel="nofollow">British television producer and script editor</a> fascinated with stories and why we tell them. In <em>Into The Woods</em>, Yorke looks at the greats and their ideas of what’s behind the art of storytelling, including Aristotle, Gustav Freytag, and Charlie Kaufman, to name a few. </p><p>In <em>Into The Woods, </em>you’ll learn about the structure of a narrative and how to make readers gravitate towards yours. Yorke uses relatable examples from expert <a href="https://www.feedbackforwriters.co.uk/2018/10/into-the-woods-john-york/" rel="nofollow">screenwriters and their methods</a> to show you the different methods you can use to make your story a literary masterpiece. </p>

16. Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story by John Yorke

Have you ever wondered why we write stories and what makes us so enthralled with them? John Yorke is a British television producer and script editor fascinated with stories and why we tell them. In Into The Woods , Yorke looks at the greats and their ideas of what’s behind the art of storytelling, including Aristotle, Gustav Freytag, and Charlie Kaufman, to name a few.

In Into The Woods, you’ll learn about the structure of a narrative and how to make readers gravitate towards yours. Yorke uses relatable examples from expert screenwriters and their methods to show you the different methods you can use to make your story a literary masterpiece.

<p>This profound and honest <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17465707-still-writing?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_13" rel="nofollow">memoir by Dani Shapiro</a> explores the life of a creative person. She fuses meditation and writing advice to provide thought-provoking tips for writers who are at the beginning of their craft or those who need to remember why they started writing to begin with. </p><p>What many readers love about this book is the intimacy with which Shapiro explains the writing process and how she expresses that, as writers, many of us feel the same way throughout our journeys while feeling alone. If you need inspiration to continue your writing journey, this book will give you that boost of motivation you’ve been missing. It’ll remind you why you started and why it’s important to keep going.</p>

17. Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life by Dani Shapiro

This profound and honest memoir by Dani Shapiro explores the life of a creative person. She fuses meditation and writing advice to provide thought-provoking tips for writers who are at the beginning of their craft or those who need to remember why they started writing to begin with.

What many readers love about this book is the intimacy with which Shapiro explains the writing process and how she expresses that, as writers, many of us feel the same way throughout our journeys while feeling alone. If you need inspiration to continue your writing journey, this book will give you that boost of motivation you’ve been missing. It’ll remind you why you started and why it’s important to keep going.

<p>Author Mary Karr explores the art of writing a memoir and shares her experience of navigating life as a creative. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25508114-the-art-of-memoir?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_17" rel="nofollow"><em>The Art of Memoir</em></a> features excerpts from her favorite memoirs and bits from other writers who share their real career experiences, which is always refreshing and inspiring to read as a fellow writer.</p><p>Karr breaks down her writing process and the vital elements of a great literary memoir. In this captivating read, you’ll learn how to use your memories of the past to dig deep and create a piece of writing that resonates with readers. </p>

18. The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

Author Mary Karr explores the art of writing a memoir and shares her experience of navigating life as a creative. The Art of Memoir features excerpts from her favorite memoirs and bits from other writers who share their real career experiences, which is always refreshing and inspiring to read as a fellow writer.

Karr breaks down her writing process and the vital elements of a great literary memoir. In this captivating read, you’ll learn how to use your memories of the past to dig deep and create a piece of writing that resonates with readers.

<p><em>1000 Words</em> is packed with insightful writing, creativity, and productivity essays. After facing a looming deadline she was dreading, Jami Attenberg started writing <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/169272349-1000-words?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_10" rel="nofollow">1,000 words daily</a> for two weeks and then shared her process online with the world. Soon after, thousands of people joined in, and it became a movement under #1000WordsofSummer. </p><p>In this writer’s guide, Attenberg will teach you to write without fear or judgment and overcome the dreaded writer’s block, even when writing is the last thing on your mind. She provides you with strategies to use to create a writing plan for yourself throughout the year so that even when you lose steam, you’ll have something to fall back on.</p>

19. 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide To Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round by Jami Attenberg

1000 Words is packed with insightful writing, creativity, and productivity essays. After facing a looming deadline she was dreading, Jami Attenberg started writing 1,000 words daily for two weeks and then shared her process online with the world. Soon after, thousands of people joined in, and it became a movement under #1000WordsofSummer.

In this writer’s guide, Attenberg will teach you to write without fear or judgment and overcome the dreaded writer’s block, even when writing is the last thing on your mind. She provides you with strategies to use to create a writing plan for yourself throughout the year so that even when you lose steam, you’ll have something to fall back on.

<p><a href="https://www.gailcarsonlevine.com/biography.html" rel="nofollow">Gail Carson Levine</a>, a bestselling author, shares insider tips and tricks for writing captivating prose. She delves into how to bring a story to life by revealing her vast writing knowledge and experience, which all writers can benefit from.</p><p>Whether you’re working on a new novel, poetry, or writing just for the sake of it, Levine reveals her knowledge of what it takes to make a story come to life. From alluring characters to crafting an unforgettable opening, you’ll learn the essential aspects of an enthralling story. She also <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21873177-writer-to-writer?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_16" rel="nofollow">answers readers’ questions from her blog</a> to provide relevant and relatable advice. This book is an excellent tool for new writers struggling at the beginning of their careers and veterans needing a refresher on their skills. </p>

20. Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink by Gail Carson Levine

Gail Carson Levine , a bestselling author, shares insider tips and tricks for writing captivating prose. She delves into how to bring a story to life by revealing her vast writing knowledge and experience, which all writers can benefit from.

Whether you’re working on a new novel, poetry, or writing just for the sake of it, Levine reveals her knowledge of what it takes to make a story come to life. From alluring characters to crafting an unforgettable opening, you’ll learn the essential aspects of an enthralling story. She also answers readers’ questions from her blog to provide relevant and relatable advice. This book is an excellent tool for new writers struggling at the beginning of their careers and veterans needing a refresher on their skills.

<p>This writing guide explains what makes a story riveting and how you can write your own. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833542-story-genius?ref=nav_sb_ss_3_12" rel="nofollow">Lisa Cron examines</a> the science behind what our brains crave in a story and how to use that to create a literary masterpiece.</p><p>Cron has a few useful tips for you if you’ve ever poured hours of hard work into a piece only to read through it and feel underwhelmed. She explains that winging it and focusing strictly on the plot are two strategies bound to fail. She offers an alternative you’ll want to try instead. Follow Cron on her step-by-step journey to creating a gripping story your readers won’t forget.</p>

21. Story Genius: How To Use Brain Science To Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel by Lisa Cron

This writing guide explains what makes a story riveting and how you can write your own. Lisa Cron examines the science behind what our brains crave in a story and how to use that to create a literary masterpiece.

Cron has a few useful tips for you if you’ve ever poured hours of hard work into a piece only to read through it and feel underwhelmed. She explains that winging it and focusing strictly on the plot are two strategies bound to fail. She offers an alternative you’ll want to try instead. Follow Cron on her step-by-step journey to creating a gripping story your readers won’t forget.

<p>Have you ever spent hours writing a novel, article, or piece of work, only to skim through it in a mere few minutes during the editing and rewriting process? In this book<em>, </em>writer and teacher <a href="https://www.mattbell.com/" rel="nofollow">Matt Bell</a> explains why we should focus more on rewriting techniques and tasks<em>,</em> as it’s an overlooked process.</p><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58640362-refuse-to-be-done?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_17" rel="nofollow"><em>Refuse To Be Done</em></a> guides you through the writing and editing process, from jotting down ideas to crafting a completed draft. You’ll learn about Bell’s most vital writing tasks and techniques, which you can use to rewrite your novel in three drafts. Regardless of whether you’re a veteran writer or new to writing, there are plenty of valuable takeaways for you to use in this guide.</p>

22. Refuse To Be Done: How To Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell

Have you ever spent hours writing a novel, article, or piece of work, only to skim through it in a mere few minutes during the editing and rewriting process? In this book , writer and teacher Matt Bell explains why we should focus more on rewriting techniques and tasks , as it’s an overlooked process.

Refuse To Be Done guides you through the writing and editing process, from jotting down ideas to crafting a completed draft. You’ll learn about Bell’s most vital writing tasks and techniques, which you can use to rewrite your novel in three drafts. Regardless of whether you’re a veteran writer or new to writing, there are plenty of valuable takeaways for you to use in this guide.

<p>Do you struggle to edit your writing effectively? Editing is no easy process, and it can often seem daunting and overwhelming, especially when it’s your work. In this book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/180467.Self_Editing_for_Fiction_Writers?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_19" rel="nofollow">Dave King and Renni Browne offer powerful editing techniques</a> to revamp your work for a flawless finished piece.</p><p>Browne and King include techniques they created and use helpful examples from books they edited to show how an editor would go through your work. You’ll learn about the mistakes every writer should avoid, which may leave you surprised to find what you could be guilty of.</p>

23. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How To Edit Yourself Into Print by Renni Browne and Dave King

Do you struggle to edit your writing effectively? Editing is no easy process, and it can often seem daunting and overwhelming, especially when it’s your work. In this book, Dave King and Renni Browne offer powerful editing techniques to revamp your work for a flawless finished piece.

Browne and King include techniques they created and use helpful examples from books they edited to show how an editor would go through your work. You’ll learn about the mistakes every writer should avoid, which may leave you surprised to find what you could be guilty of.

<p>Have you ever read a story and gotten completely lost in a conversation between characters? If so, that’s an example of masterful dialogue, something that all writers want to nail in their writing. Getting the plot right is challenging, but the dialogue can make or break your book. </p><p>Your dialogue can lose the reader’s attention or draw them in, which is why <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22384327-how-to-write-dazzling-dialogue?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_25" rel="nofollow"><em>How to Write Dazzling Dialogue</em></a> by James Scott Bell is a gem for writers. It explores writers’ top issues with dialogue, how to avoid them, how to improve your dialogue, and all the tools you need to craft compelling dialogue readers want to read. Bell also provides examples from published books and screenplays to see what mesmerizing dialogue sounds like.</p>

24. How To Write Dazzling Dialogue: The Fastest Way To Improve Any Manuscript by James Scott Bell

Have you ever read a story and gotten completely lost in a conversation between characters? If so, that’s an example of masterful dialogue, something that all writers want to nail in their writing. Getting the plot right is challenging, but the dialogue can make or break your book.

Your dialogue can lose the reader’s attention or draw them in, which is why How to Write Dazzling Dialogue by James Scott Bell is a gem for writers. It explores writers’ top issues with dialogue, how to avoid them, how to improve your dialogue, and all the tools you need to craft compelling dialogue readers want to read. Bell also provides examples from published books and screenplays to see what mesmerizing dialogue sounds like.

<p><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/author/johntruby">John Truby</a> is an American screenwriter, teacher, author, story consultant, and director. He has an impressive list of students who have gone on to write blockbuster hit scripts, including <em>Scream, Shrek, </em>and<em> Sleepless in Seattle. </em>In <em>The Anatomy of Story, </em>Truby shares the valuable wisdom he so often imparts in his classes to help writers write an effective narrative.</p><p>He explores how writers can use their experiences to create captivating stories and heroes who grow meaningfully throughout the story. <span>You’ll learn the techniques needed to create characters readers relate to and care for, which will move your audience.</span></p>

25. The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps To Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby

John Truby is an American screenwriter, teacher, author, story consultant, and director. He has an impressive list of students who have gone on to write blockbuster hit scripts, including Scream, Shrek, and Sleepless in Seattle. In The Anatomy of Story, Truby shares the valuable wisdom he so often imparts in his classes to help writers write an effective narrative.

He explores how writers can use their experiences to create captivating stories and heroes who grow meaningfully throughout the story. You’ll learn the techniques needed to create characters readers relate to and care for, which will move your audience.

<p>“Subway had this promotion that if you verified/registered an email for a rewards card, you’d get a certain amount of points,” recalls a sneaky commenter. “It gave you enough points for a six-inch, with a drink and cookies or chips.”</p><p>You can guess what this gentleman did next; he opened dozens of email addresses to game the system.</p>

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Lauren Oyler Doesn’t Take Her Work Too Seriously

By Chris Black

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This is an edition of the newsletter Pulling Weeds With Chris Black, in which the columnist weighs in on hot topics in culture. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.

Nothing gets the internet—and our depleted attention spans—going more than a good essay. They give us a glimpse into the writer’s psyche and something to talk about. Known for her meticulous and sometimes scathing book reviews, much-discussed article about going on the Goop Cruise, and her first novel, Fake Accounts , the writer Lauren Oyler has just released a witty essay collection, No Judgements , that hits a nice assortment of conversation-starters: Berlin, autofiction, Goodreads, anxiety, vulnerability, and gossip. Oyler is polarizing, but I chuckled at the part in the book where she describes herself as “a snob, highbrow, elitist.” I spoke to Oyler from my apartment in New York City while she was at The Line Hotel in Los Angeles, making a stop on her book tour. We discussed self-awareness, the idea of persona, Berghain, and authenticity.

Lauren Oyler: I moved to Berlin in 2012, but I went back to New York after a couple of years and I’d go back and forth. Now I’m in Berlin forever unless they kick me out. There’s a lot of it that makes sense, and you can make a bunch of political arguments about why I like life there. The hangout, Bohemian lifestyle is possible because everything is so much cheaper and people don’t have jobs, and the values are different. You don’t have to look any particular way. It’s a cosmopolitan city in that it’s very diverse, particularly for Europe, so it’s always exciting to meet people from all over the world. There’s this ineffable, mysterious thing to it. I don’t know why I’m so drawn to it and not to New York. I don’t really care about New York.

Is it, though? Is it actually the most important city in the world?

Probably Beijing at this point. But I think that some of what’s happening in Berlin now is the result of it slowly, resistantly modernizing. It used to be that you couldn’t find a good meal to save your life and now it is a bit more worldly. Also, it is more expensive so you’re losing a lot of the great, old grungy club stuff.

I don’t find it easy to work really at all. I find it quite difficult to work. I’m very much dreading it, but it’s all my internal ambitions for whatever it is I’m doing that are keeping me doing it. But I do feel separate now, away from all the New York media and social media. I think it was easier for me to write this book without really caring as much about how it would be received.

I think humor is an opt-in sort of thing in life, particularly in writing. For a lot of writers, particularly in the last 10 years, there was this idea that if you were making a joke, you didn’t care about the destruction of American society. Like, “Why are you writing book reviews when democracy is collapsing?” The things that I write about aren’t that serious. I’m not doing hardcore war reporting where it would be quite difficult, if not impossible, to make a joke.

It’s even true of the more serious things in the book. The Berlin essay is quite earnest in many ways, and the autofiction one is too, but we’re talking about autofiction. It’s a literary form, it should be funny. But if people don’t want to get the joke, they don’t have to, particularly because my sense of humor is so ironic and I’m saying something that can be interpreted two ways. I also think there’s now a resistance to understanding ambiguity in tone. If you’re using irony to represent Goodreads, it’s funny, but maybe actually affects the publishing industry and therefore has a trickle down effect on capital L literature, which I care very much about, so it is kind of serious. If you use irony, you can acknowledge both of those. It’s very economical as a rhetorical strategy because you can say, "Obviously this is stupid, but maybe it’s not." I try to be critical and also make fun of myself and implicate myself in these things.

I think it’s fun. I would say, if I may use some sort of literary language for a second, I’m working with the idea of persona and using it in my work to critique the idea of the persona. But I find it quite dispiriting when I meet people and they’re like, “Oh, I thought you were going to be really mean. I’m scared of you.”

Really? Your persona is pretty upbeat.

There’s this idea that the persona is fake and your real self must be radically different from the character that you perform, but my feeling is that the character you perform is just a heightened party version. Your persona is still you.

People are afraid you’re trying to trick them, but I just want you to have a good time with my work and enjoy reading it.

To go back to Berlin, there are things that only nightlife makes possible. I would never meet that guy in any other context and I certainly wouldn’t spend eight hours talking to him about the future of Poland. I could have written a version of that article which would be buttoned up and be a straightforward profile of Maxime as a representative of the new Eastern European refugee in the EU, but people wouldn’t read that and it wouldn’t allow you to get into his brilliant character. You should enjoy him as I have enjoyed him as well.

I was a bit worried about quote-unquote “writing” about Berghain for a variety of reasons. One is “don’t talk about Fight Club” or whatever. But I feel like Berghain is cashed. It’s not over, I obviously love Berghain, but it’s as famous as it’s going to be and so nothing you say about it can affect its future in any direction. But there’s this response, which is related to the idea of persona, with people saying, “Oh, you went to Berghain and you think that’s so cool?” Well, no. If I were to write about a cooler club that you’d never heard of, you actually wouldn’t say that.

And you write about this on the other side—these global, western, millennial spaces that signify a lot of stuff. I just read your thing about Sweetgreen and Equinox , which are kind of like the bougie, uncool version of Berghain. Everybody knows what those things are, you’re not supposed to say that you enjoy them, but you do. It’s quite hard to write about life today without talking about those very weighty, signifying, iconic things.

You’re welcome to come anytime. I usually go on Sunday and I stay sober for as long as it’s feasible. You get there early because you’ve got to get in before the line, so you’re tired and after about eight hours you’re like, “I’m either going to do some drugs or go home.”

I have this long essay about autofiction in the book, and I wanted to write this for many years because autofiction as a literary form has been much maligned in the media. Literary critics will do a sideswipe and roll their eyes, and it is often vaguely defined. A lot of people don’t think it’s a useful term at all, but I do. Basically it is any work of fiction in which the protagonist, narrator, or main character is perceived to be the author. In the reader’s mind, the main character is the same person as the person whose name is on the cover. In the last 15 years or so, the paradigmatic autofictioneers are Knausgård, Ben Lerner, Sheila Heti, Tao Lin, Teju Cole and lesser figures. The way that they create, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, the effect of the narrator or the protagonist being the same person they are is through a straightforward, almost naturalistic mode of narration, so you feel like you’re basically reading a person’s thoughts. The setup of the novel is often that there’s a writer, the writer has a career that maps onto the author’s career, and they live in the same place that the author lives. It’s not new, there’s many examples of works from the 20th century in particular that would count, including Proust.

The reason [autofiction] had this resurgence in the last 15 years is that the persona relationship between the author and the narrator mimics the relationship between the social media user and the “real person.” They’re used to relating to people and texts that they understand are mostly but not fully true. So if there’s a literary form that mimics that social media relationship, it feels familiar and more exciting in the way that social media felt very exciting because it felt like you were accessing something real or authentic.

Rachel Cusk had this interview many years ago, where she was like, “Fiction is fake and embarrassing. I don’t want to sit at my desk and make up little people and make them do stuff.” I think that was a feeling many authors had in the context of this 24-hour media cycle, globalized attention economy thing. I think it connects with the personal essay boom as well.

In Fake Accounts I had a lot of fun playing with the feeling of honesty, the feeling of authenticity, the feeling of reality, and taking that assumption and testing whether you could lie in a certain way where people won’t say anything to you. I heard a story about a friend of a friend who got stopped at customs on the way back to Germany and in her bag she had tons of weird drugs. I was told that what she did was just annoyingly explain every single drug to the customs agents until they got so fed up with her that they just let her through. And I think that that’s also what happens online a lot—you’re just like, It’s fine. Just stop .

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Writing My Autobiography

A re you still writing?” he asked.

“I am,” I answered.

“What are you working on at the moment?”

“An autobiography,” I said.

“Interesting,” he replied. “Whose?”

The implication here, you will note, is that mine hasn’t been a life sufficiently interesting to merit an autobiography. The implication isn’t altogether foolish. Most autobiographies, at least the best autobiographies, have been written by people who have historical standing, or have known many important people, or have lived in significant times, or have noteworthy family connections or serious lessons to convey . I qualify on none of these grounds. Not that, roughly two years ago when I sat down to write my autobiography, I let that stop me.

An autobiography, to state the obvious, is at base a biography written by its own subject. But how is one to write it: as a matter of setting the record straight, as a form of confessional, as a mode of seeking justice, or as a justification of one’s life? “An autobiography,” wrote George Orwell, “is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.” Is this true? I prefer to think not.

Autobiography is a complex enterprise, calling for its author not only to know himself but to be honest in conveying that knowledge. “I could inform the dullest author how he might write an interesting book,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “Let him relate the events of his own life with Honesty, not disguising the feelings that accompanied them.” One of the nicest things about being a professor, it has been said, is that one gets to talk for fifty minutes without being interrupted. So one of the allurements of autobiography is that one gets to write hundreds of pages about that eminently fascinating character, oneself, even if in doing so one only establishes one’s insignificance.

The great autobiographies—of which there have not been all that many—have been wildly various. One of the first, that of the Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, is marked by an almost unrelieved braggadocio: No artist was more perfect, no warrior more brave, no lover more pleasing than the author, or so he would have us believe. Edward Gibbon’s autobiography, though elegantly written, is disappointing in its brevity. That of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, heavily striking the confessional note, might have been told in a booth to a priest. Ben Franklin’s autobiography is full of advice on how the rest of us should live. John Stuart Mill’s is astounding in its account of its author’s prodigiously early education, which began with his learning Greek under his father’s instruction at the age of three. Then there is Henry Adams’s autobiography, suffused with disappointment over his feeling out of joint with his times and the world’s not recognizing his true value. In Making It , Norman Podhoretz wrote an autobiography informed by a single message, which he termed a “dirty little secret,” namely that there is nothing wrong with ambition and that success, despite what leftist intellectuals might claim, is nothing to be ashamed of.

Please note that all of these are books written by men. Might it be that women lack the vanity required to write—or should I say “indulge in”—the literary act of autobiography? In Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome , I recently read that Agrippina the Younger, the mother of Nero, wrote her autobiography, which has not survived, and which Mary Beard counts as “one of the great losses of all classical literature.” I wish that Jane Austen had written an autobiography, and so too George Eliot and Willa Cather. Perhaps these three women, great writers all, were too sensibly modest for autobiography, that least modest of all literary forms.

A utobiography can be the making or breaking of writers who attempt it. John Stuart Mill’s autobiography has gone a long way toward humanizing a writer whose other writings tend toward the coldly formal. Harold Laski wrote that Mill’s “ Autobiography , in the end the most imperishable of his writings, is a record as noble as any in our literature of consistent devotion to the public good.”

If Mill’s autobiography humanized him, the autobiography of the novelist Anthony Trollope did for him something approaching the reverse. In An Autobiography , Trollope disdains the notion of an author’s needing inspiration to write well. He reports that “there was no day on which it was my positive duty to write for the publishers, as it was my duty to write reports for the Post Office,” where he had a regular job. “I was free to be idle if I pleased. But as I had made up my mind to undertake this second profession [that of novelist], I found it to be expedient to bind myself by certain self-imposed laws.” Trollope recounts—emphasis here on “counts”—that as a novelist he averages forty pages per week, at 250 words per page. He writes: “There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to such a taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his imagination should allow himself to wait till inspiration moves him. When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been able to repress my scorn.” Trollope then mentions that on the day after he finished his novel Doctor Thorne , he began writing his next novel, The Bertrams . For a long spell the literati refused to forgive Trollope for shearing inspiration away from the creation of literary art, for comparing the job of the novelist to a job at the post office. Only the splendid quality of his many novels eventually won him forgiveness and proper recognition.

A serious biography takes up what the world thinks of its subject, what his friends and family think of him, and—if the information is available in letters, diaries, journals, or interviews—what he thinks of himself. An autobiography is ultimately about the last question: what the author thinks of himself. Yet how many of us have sufficient self-knowledge to give a convincing answer? In her splendid novel Memoirs of Hadrian , Marguerite Yourcenar has Hadrian note: “When I seek deep within me for knowledge of myself what I find is obscure, internal, unformulated, and as secret as any complicity.” The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the scrupulously examined one is rare indeed.

My own life has not provided the richest fodder for autobiography. For one thing, it has not featured much in the way of drama. For another, good fortune has allowed me the freedom to do with my life much as I have wished. I have given my autobiography the title Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life , with the subtitle Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Life . Now well along in its closing chapter, mine, I contend, has been thus far—here I pause to touch wood—a most lucky life.

My title derives from the story of Croesus, who ruled the country of Lydia from circa 585–547 b.c. , and who is perhaps today best known for the phrase “rich as Croesus.” The vastly wealthy Croesus thought himself the luckiest man on earth and asked confirmation of this from Solon, the wise Athenian, who told him that in fact the luckiest man on earth was another Athenian who had two sons in that year’s Olympics. When Croesus asked who was second luckiest, Solon cited another Greek who had a most happy family life. Croesus was displeased but not convinced by Solon’s answers. Years later he was captured by the Persian Cyrus, divested of his kingdom and his wealth, and set on a pyre to be burned alive, before which he was heard to exclaim that Solon had been right. The moral of the story is, of course: Never say you have had a lucky life until you know how your life ends.

I have known serious sadness in my life. I have undergone a divorce. I have become a member of that most dolorous of clubs, parents who have buried one of their children. Yet I have had much to be grateful for. In the final paragraph of a book I wrote some years ago on the subject of ambition, I noted that “We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing.” In all these realms, I lucked out. I was born to intelligent, kindly parents; at a time that, though I was drafted into the army, allowed me to miss being called up to fight in any wars; and in the largely unmitigated prosperity enjoyed by the world’s most interesting country, the United States of America.

Writing is a form of discovery. Yet can even writing ferret out the quality and meaning of one’s own life? Alexis de Tocqueville, the endlessly quotable Tocqueville, wrote: “The fate of individuals is still more hidden than that of peoples,” and “the destinies of individuals are often as uncertain as those of nations.” Fate, destiny, those two great tricksters, who knows what they have in store for one, even in the final days of one’s life? I, for example, as late as the age of eighteen, had never heard the word “intellectual.” If you had asked me what a man of letters was, I would have said a guy who works at the post office. Yet I have been destined to function as an intellectual for the better part of my adult life, and have more than once been called a man of letters. Fate, destiny, go figure!

T he first question that arises in writing one’s autobiography is what to include and what to exclude. Take, for starters, sex. In his nearly seven-hundred-page autobiography, Journeys of the Mind , the historian of late antiquity Peter Brown waits until page 581 to mention, in the most glancing way, that he is married. Forty or so pages later, the name of a second wife is mentioned. Whether he had children with either of these wives, we never learn. But then, Brown’s is a purely intellectual autobiography, concerned all but exclusively with the development of the author’s mind and those who influenced that development.

My autobiography, though less than half the length of Brown’s, allowed no such luxury of reticence. Sex, especially when I was an adolescent, was a central subject, close to a preoccupation. After all, boys—as I frequently instructed my beautiful granddaughter Annabelle when she was growing up—are brutes. I came of age BP, or Before the Pill, and consummated sex, known in that day as “going all the way,” was not then a serious possibility. Too much was at risk—pregnancy, loss of reputation—for middle-class girls. My friends and I turned to prostitution.

Apart from occasionally picking up streetwalkers on some of Chicago’s darker streets, prostitution for the most part meant trips of sixty or so miles to the bordellos of Braidwood or Kankakee, Illinois. The sex, costing $3, was less than perfunctory. (“Don’t bother to take off your socks or that sweater,” one was instructed.) What was entailed was less sensual pleasure than a rite of passage, of becoming a man, of “losing your cherry,” a phrase I have only recently learned means forgoing one’s innocence. We usually went on these trips in groups of five or six in one or another of our fathers’ cars. Much joking on the way up and even more on the way back. Along Chicago’s Outer Drive, which we took home in those days, there was a Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer sign that read, “Have you had it lately?,” which always got a good laugh.

I like to think of myself as a shy pornographer, or, perhaps better, a sly pornographer. By this I mean that in my fiction and where necessary in my essays I do not shy away from the subject of sex, only from the need to describe it in any of its lurid details. So I have done in my autobiography. On the subject of sex in my first marriage (of two), for example, I say merely, “I did not want my money back.” But, then, all sex, if one comes to think about it, is essentially comic, except of course one’s own.

On the inclusion-exclusion question, the next subject I had to consider was money, or my personal finances. Financially I have nothing to brag about. In my autobiography I do, though, occasionally give the exact salaries—none of them spectacular—of the jobs I’ve held. With some hesitation (lest it seem boasting) I mention that a book I wrote on the subject of snobbery earned, with its paperback sale, roughly half-a-million dollars. I fail to mention those of my books that earned paltry royalties, or, as I came to think of them, peasantries. In my autobiography, I contented myself with noting my good fortune in being able to earn enough money doing pretty much what I wished to do and ending up having acquired enough money not to worry overmuch about financial matters. Like the man said, a lucky life.

If I deal glancingly in my autobiography with sex and personal finances, I tried to take a pass on politics. My own political development is of little interest. I started out in my political life a fairly standard liberal—which in those days meant despising Richard Nixon—and have ended up today contemptuous of both our political parties: Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, as the critic Dwight Macdonald referred to them. Forgive the self-congratulatory note, but in politics I prefer to think myself a member in good standing of that third American political party, never alas on the ballot, the anti-BS party.

Of course, sometimes one needs to have a politics, if only to fight off the politics of others. Ours is a time when politics seems to be swamping all else: art, education, journalism, culture generally. I have had the dubious distinction of having been “canceled,” for what were thought my political views, and I write about this experience in my autobiography. I was fired from the editorship of Phi Beta Kappa’s quarterly magazine, the American Scholar —a job I had held for more than twenty years—because of my ostensibly conservative, I suppose I ought to make that “right-wing,” politics. My chief cancellers were two academic feminists and an African-American historian-biographer, who sat on the senate, or governing board, of Phi Beta Kappa.

T he official version given out by Phi Beta Kappa for my cancellation—in those days still known as a firing—was that the magazine was losing subscribers and needed to seek younger readers. Neither assertion was true, but both currently appear in the Wikipedia entry under my name. The New York Times also printed this “official” but untrue version of my cancellation. In fact, I was canceled because I had failed to run anything in the magazine about academic feminism or race, both subjects that had already been done to death elsewhere and that I thought cliché-ridden and hence of little interest for a magazine I specifically tried to keep apolitical. During my twenty-two years at the American Scholar , the name of no current United States president was mentioned. If anything resembling a theme emerged during my editorship, it was the preservation of the tradition of the liberal arts, a subject on which I was able to acquire contributions from Jacques Barzun, Paul Kristeller, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Frederick Crews, and others.

That I was fired not for anything I had done but for things I had failed to do is an indication of how far we had come in the realm of political correctness. I take up this topic in my autobiography, one theme of which is the vast changes that have taken place in American culture over my lifetime. A notable example is an essay on homosexuality that I wrote and published in Harper’s in 1970, a mere fifty-three years ago. The essay made the points that we still did not know much about the origin of male homosexuality, that there was much hypocrisy concerning the subject, that homosexuals were living under considerable social pressure and prejudice, and that given a choice, most people would prefer that their children not be homosexual. This, as I say, was in 1970, before the gay liberation movement had got underway in earnest. The essay attracted a vast number of letters in opposition, and a man named Merle Miller, who claimed I was calling for genocide of homosexuals, wrote a book based on the essay. Gore Vidal, never known for his temperate reasoning, claimed my argument was ad Hitlerum . (Vidal, after contracting Epstein-Barr virus late in life, claimed that “Joseph Epstein gave it to me.”) I have never reprinted the essay in any of my collections because I felt that it would stir up too much strong feeling. For what it is worth, I also happen to be pleased by the greater tolerance accorded homosexuality in the half century since my essay was published.

The larger point is that today neither Harper’s nor any other mainstream magazine would dare to publish that essay. Yet a few years after the essay was published, I was offered a job teaching in the English Department of Northwestern University, and the year after that, I was appointed editor of the American Scholar. Today, of course, neither job would have been available to me.

Do these matters—my cancellation from the American Scholar , my unearned reputation as a homophobe—come under the heading of self-justification? Perhaps so. But then, what better, or at least more convenient, place to attempt to justify oneself than in one’s autobiography?

Many changes have taken place in my lifetime, some for the better, some for the worse, some whose value cannot yet be known. I note, for example, if not the death then the attenuation of the extended family (nephews, nieces, cousins) in American life. Whereas much of my parents’ social life revolved around an extensive cousinage, I today have grandnephews and grandnieces living on both coasts whom I have never met and probably never shall. I imagine some of them one day being notified of my death and responding, “Really? [Pause] What’s for dinner?”

I take up in my autobiography what Philip Rieff called, in his book of this title, the Triumph of the Therapeutic, a development that has altered child-rearing, artistic creation, and much else in our culture. Although the doctrines of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and others are no longer taken as gospel, their secondary influence has conquered much of modern culture. My parents’ generation did not hold with therapeutic culture, which contends that the essentials of life are the achievement of self-esteem and individual happiness, replacing honor, courage, kindness, and generosity.

In my autobiography, I note that when my mother was depressed by her knowledge that she was dying of cancer, a friend suggested that there were support groups for people with terminal diseases, one of which might be helpful. I imagined telling my mother about such groups, and her response: “Let me see,” she is likely to have said. “You want me to go into a room with strangers, where I will listen to their problems and then I’ll tell them mine, and this will make me feel better.” Pause. “Is this the kind of idiot I’ve raised as a son?”

T hen there is digital culture, the verdict on which is not yet in. Digital culture has changed the way we read, think, make social connections, do business, and so much more. I write in my autobiography that in its consequences digital culture is up there with the printing press and the automobile. Its influence is still far from fully fathomed.

One of my challenges in writing my autobiography was to avoid seeming to brag about my quite modest accomplishments. In the Rhetoric , Aristotle writes: “Speaking at length about oneself, making false claims, taking the credit for what another has done, these are signs of boastfulness.” I tried not to lapse into boasting. Yet at one point I quote Jacques Barzun, in a letter to me, claiming that as a writer I am in the direct line of William Hazlitt, though in some ways better, for my task—that of finding the proper language to establish both intimacy and critical distance—is in the current day more difficult than in Hazlitt’s. At least I deliberately neglected to mention that, in response to my being fired from the American Scholar, Daniel Patrick Moynihan flew an American flag at half-mast over the Capitol, a flag he sent to me as a souvenir. Quoting others about my accomplishments, is this anything other than boasting by other means? I hope so, though even now I’m not altogether sure.

I have a certain pride in these modest accomplishments. Setting out in life, I never thought I should publish some thirty-odd books or have the good luck to continue writing well into my eighties. The question for me as an autobiographer was how to express that pride without preening. The most efficient way, of course, is never to write an autobiography.

Why, then, did I write mine? Although I have earlier characterized writing as a form of discovery, I did not, in writing my autobiography, expect to discover many radically new things about my character or the general lineaments of my life. Nor did I think that my life bore any lessons that were important to others. I had, and still have, little to confess; I have no hidden desire to be spanked by an NFL linebacker in a nun’s habit. A writer, a mere scribbler, I have led a largely spectatorial life, standing on the sidelines, glass of wine in hand, watching the circus pass before me.

Still, I wrote my autobiography, based in a loose way on Wordsworth’s notion that poetry arises from “emotion recollected in tranquility.” Writing it gave me an opportunity to review my life at the end of my life in a tranquil manner. I was able to note certain trends, parallels, and phenomena that have marked my life and set my destiny.

The first of these, as I remarked earlier, was the fortunate time in which I was born, namely the tail end of the Great Depression—to be specific, in 1937. Because of the Depression, people were having fewer children, and often having them later. (My mother was twenty-seven, my father thirty at my birth.) Born when it was, my generation, though subject to the draft—not, in my experience of it, a bad thing—danced between the wars: We were too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam. We were also children during World War II, the last war the country fully supported, which gave us a love of our country. Ours was a low-population generation, untroubled by the vagaries of college admissions or the trauma of rejection by the school of one’s choice. Colleges, in fact, wanted us.

Or consider parents, another fateful phenomenon over which one has no choice. To be born to thoughtless, or disagreeable, or depressed, or deeply neurotic parents cannot but substantially affect all one’s days. Having a father who is hugely successful in the world can be as dampening to the spirit as having a father who is a failure. And yet about all this one has no say. I have given the chapter on my parents the title “A Winning Ticket in the Parents Lottery,” for my own parents, though neither went to college, were thoughtful, honorable, and in no way psychologically crushing. They gave my younger brother and me the freedom to develop on our own; they never told me what schools to attend, what work to seek, whom or when to marry. I knew I was never at the center of my parents’ lives, yet I also knew I could count on them when I needed their support, which more than once I did, and they did not fail to come through. As I say, a winning ticket.

As one writes about one’s own life, certain themes are likely to emerge that hadn’t previously stood out so emphatically. In my case, one persistent motif is that of older boys, then older men, who have supported or aided me in various ways. A boy nearly two years older than I named Jack Libby saw to it that I wasn’t bullied or pushed around in a neighborhood where I was the youngest kid on the block. In high school, a boy to whom I have given the name Jeremy Klein taught me a thing or two about gambling and corruption generally. Later in life, men eight, nine, ten, even twenty or more years older than I promoted my career: Hilton Kramer in promoting my candidacy for the editorship of the American Scholar , Irving Howe in helping me get a teaching job (without an advanced degree) at Northwestern, John Gross in publishing me regularly on important subjects in the Times Literary Supplement , Edward Shils in ways too numerous to mention. Something there was about me, evidently, that was highly protégéable.

I haven’t yet seen the index for my autobiography, but my guess is that it could have been name-ier. I failed, for example, to include my brief but pleasing friendship with Sol Linowitz. Sol was the chairman of Xerox, and later served the Johnson administration as ambassador to the Organization of American States. He also happened to be a reader of mine, and on my various trips to Washington I was often his guest at the F Street Club, a political lunch club where he reserved a private room in which we told each other jokes, chiefly Jewish jokes. I might also have added my six years as a member of the National Council of the National Endowment for the Arts, whose members included the actors Robert Stack and Celeste Holm, the Balanchine dancer Arthur Mitchell, Robert Joffrey, the soprano Renée Fleming, the novelist Toni Morrison, the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, the architect I. M. Pei, the painter Helen Frankenthaler, and other highly droppable names.

Confronting one’s regrets is another inescapable element in writing one’s autobiography. Ah, regrets: the red MG convertible one didn’t buy in one’s twenties, the elegant young Asian woman one should have asked to dinner, the year one failed to spend in Paris. The greater the number of one’s regrets, the grander their scope, the sadder, at its close, one’s life figures to be. I come out fairly well in the regrets ledger. I regret not having studied classics at university, and so today I cannot read ancient Greek. I regret not having been a better father to my sons. I regret not asking my mother more questions about her family and not telling my father what a good man I thought he was. As regrets go, these are not minor, yet neither have I found them to be crippling.

Then there is the matter of recognizing one’s quirks, or peculiar habits. A notable one of mine, acquired late in life, is to have become near to the reverse of a hypochondriac. I have not yet reached the stage of anosognosia, or the belief that one is well when one is ill—a stage, by the way, that Chekhov, himself a physician, seems to have attained. I take vitamins, get flu and Covid shots, and watch what I eat, but I try to steer clear of physicians. This tendency kicked in not long after my decades-long primary care physician retired. In his The Body: A Guide for Occupants , Bill Bryson defines good health as the health enjoyed by someone who hasn’t had a physical lately. The ancients made this point more directly, advising bene caca et declina medicos (translation on request) . For a variety of reasons, physicians of the current day are fond of sending patients for a multiplicity of tests: bone density tests, colonoscopies, biopsies, X-rays of all sorts, CT scans, MRIs, stopping only at SATs. I am not keen to discover ailments that don’t bother me. At the age of eighty-seven, I figure I am playing with house money, and I have no wish to upset the house by prodding my health in search of imperfections any more than is absolutely necessary.

The older one gets, unless one’s life is lived in pain or deepest regret, the more fortunate one feels. Not always, not everyone, I suppose. “The longer I live, the more I am inclined to the belief that this earth is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum,” said George Bernard Shaw, who lived to age ninety-four. Though the world seems to be in a hell of a shape just now, I nonetheless prefer to delay my exit for as long as I can. I like it here, continue to find much that is interesting and amusing, and have no wish to depart the planet.

Still, with advancing years I have found my interests narrowing. Not least among my waning interests is that in travel. I like my domestic routine too much to abandon it for foreign countries where the natives figure to be wearing Air Jordan shoes, Ralph Lauren shirts, and cargo pants. Magazines that I once looked forward to, many of which I have written for in the past, no longer contain much that I find worth reading. A former moviegoer, I haven’t been to a movie theater in at least a decade. The high price of concert and opera tickets has driven me away. The supposedly great American playwrights—Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee—have never seemed all that good to me, and I miss them not at all. If all this sounds like a complaint that the culture has deserted me, I don’t feel that it has. I can still listen to my beloved Mozart on discs, read Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, Willa Cather, and the other great novelists, watch the splendid movies of earlier days on Turner Classics and HBO—live, in other words, on the culture of the past.

“Vho needs dis?” Igor Stravinsky is supposed to have remarked when presented with some new phenomena of the avant-garde or other work in the realm of art without obvious benefit. “Vho needs dis?” is a question that occurred to me more than once or twice as I wrote my autobiography. All I can say is that those who read my autobiography will read of the life of a man lucky enough to have devoted the better part of his days to fitting words together into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into essays and stories on a wide variety of topics. Now in his autobiography all the sentences and paragraphs are about his own life. He hopes that these sentences are well made, these paragraphs have a point, and together they attain to a respectable truth quotient, containing no falsehoods whatsoever. He hopes that, on these modest grounds at least, his autobiography qualifies as worth reading.

Joseph Epstein is author of Gallimaufry , a collection of essays and reviews.

Image by Museum Rotterdam on Wikimedia Commons , licensed via Creative Commons . Image cropped.

Articles by Joseph Epstein

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How to Write an Essay on a Book You Didn't Read
The first thing to do is to carefully read the requirements for your essay in order to understand what information you need to pay attention to. Then, you will move on to skimming through the book. And the first tip is to always take notes while reading. If you write down the key information and ideas it will significantly simplify the process ...
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Even if the instructor has introduced the assignment in class, make sure to read the prompt on your own. You'd be surprised how often someone comes to the Writing Center to ask for help on a paper before reading the prompt. Once they do read the prompt, they often find that it answers many of their questions. When you read the assignment ...
How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay
Table of contents. Step 1: Reading the text and identifying literary devices. Step 2: Coming up with a thesis. Step 3: Writing a title and introduction. Step 4: Writing the body of the essay. Step 5: Writing a conclusion. Other interesting articles.
How to Write Literary Analysis
Literary analysis involves examining all the parts of a novel, play, short story, or poem—elements such as character, setting, tone, and imagery—and thinking about how the author uses those elements to create certain effects. A literary essay isn't a book review: you're not being asked whether or not you liked a book or whether you'd ...
How to Write an Essay on a Book [Full Guide]
On a rough sheet of paper, sketch the phrases or words that first come to mind. Then they can be developed into a whole essay. So, think carefully about what you want to say about the topic. Then write down your thoughts on paper in a column. And then decide in what order you want to display these thoughts on paper.
How to Start an Essay About a Book: A Comprehensive Guide
Here are essential steps to guide you through the process: 1. Understand the Book's Context and Significance. To create an impactful introduction, begin by understanding the book's historical context, the author's background, and the broader significance of the work. This contextual knowledge will help you establish the relevance of the ...
How to Write an Essay On Books
Some teachers recommend writing an essay on your favorite books. Make a short outline that includes an introduction, the main part, and a conclusion. Recall what your book is about. Write out a couple of main thoughts that are memorable and seem close to your heart. Write a review of the book, the kind you'd like to write for your friend.
How to Write an Essay Introduction
Table of contents. Step 1: Hook your reader. Step 2: Give background information. Step 3: Present your thesis statement. Step 4: Map your essay's structure. Step 5: Check and revise. More examples of essay introductions. Other interesting articles. Frequently asked questions about the essay introduction.
The Beginner's Guide to Writing an Essay
Come up with a thesis. Create an essay outline. Write the introduction. Write the main body, organized into paragraphs. Write the conclusion. Evaluate the overall organization. Revise the content of each paragraph. Proofread your essay or use a Grammar Checker for language errors. Use a plagiarism checker.
A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing an Essay on a Book
Tools for Writing an Essay on a Book. When writing an essay on a book there are certain tools that can help make the process easier. Knowing some of these basic terms and tools can help you write a better essay and make it much more enjoyable. Outlining. Creating an outline is one of the most important steps in writing an essay.
How to Write an Essay About a Book: the Essential Guide
Read the book and locate literary devices. The first step is to read the book and take notes carefully. As you read, pay attention to the main points of the story. For instance, you can take note of things that are intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in writing. These usually form the basis of your analysis.
Introductions
In general, your introductions should contain the following elements: When you're writing an essay, it's helpful to think about what your reader needs to know in order to follow your argument. Your introduction should include enough information so that readers can understand the context for your thesis. For example, if you are analyzing ...
How to Write an Essay About a Book
How to write an essay about a book - 8 key tips. 1. Read some analysis of the book in question. It is always better to read secondary literature first, otherwise, you may be confused while reading the book. 2. Read the book. Try to read as much as possible. If there is not enough time left, you may skip the passages which seem unimportant ...
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Step 2. Pick 3 elements you are most comfortable with. In this step, we'll use what I call The Power of Three. You don't need more than three elements to write an excellent essay about a novel or a book. Just pick three from the list you just created with which you are most familiar or that you understand the best.
Crafting an Expository Essay About a Book: Examples & Steps
How To Write An Expository Essay About a Book? Expository writing requires a few simple steps to ensure your paper is well-structured and engaging. Here are the steps you should follow to write an effective essay about a book: Step 1. Read and Analyze the Book Thoroughly. Whether you have been assigned a book by your instructor or have chosen ...
Essays About Books: Top 5 Examples and Writing Prompts
Books offer unlimited benefits if well used, but not when abused, and as the writer said, "no book can be good if studied negligently.". 5. Long Essay on Books by Ram. "Books are important because they provide a few things that are key to an open and intelligent society.".
Essays About Reading: 5 Examples And Topic Ideas
Writing about a book that had a significant impact on your childhood can help you form an instant connection with your reader, as many people hold a childhood literature favorite near and dear to their hearts. 5. Catcher In The Rye: That Time A Banned Book Changed My Life By Pat Kelly.
Writing An Essay On A Book
Read the assigned book. The best way to capture the essence of a book as you seek to know how to write an essay on a book is to read the work. You cannot capture the message of the book with the first reading; hove well you are at it. You have to read the work severally, identifying different aspects that make the work stand out or fail in one ...
How to Write Book Titles in Your Essays
Exceptions to the Rule. The rule for writing book titles in italics applies specifically to running text. If the book title is standing on its own, as in a heading, there's no need to italicize it. Additionally, if the book is part of a larger series and you're mentioning both the title of the series and that of the individual book, you can ...
Virginia Woolf: "How Should One Read a Book?"
Captain Scott, starving and freezing to death in the snow, affects us as deeply as any made-up story of adventure by Conrad or Defoe; but it affects us differently. The biography differs from the novel. To ask a biographer to give us the same kind of pleasure that we get from a novelist is to misuse and misread him.
How to write a good essay when you haven't read the book?
Take any main idea you want and develop 3 BPs proving your point by using the PDF file of the novel and ctrl + F key words from the main idea or thesis, then use whichever quote pops up as supporting evidence. You can usually fit any quote to any main idea. This is coming from a certified procrastinator, someone who hates reading and has done ...
Hints On Writing Persuasive Essays About Books
School years are the time when students have to read a lot of stories, novels, poems and book review are often assigned to review and evaluate the content and the ideas of various literary works. Writing a winning essay about books can help you improve your understanding of the text and get a high grade.. Read about effective ways to create an effective persuasive essay about an exciting piece ...
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chuma.cas.usf.edu
I Tested Three AI Essay-writing Tools, and Here's What I Found
Even if you do use an AI tool to generate a whole paragraph or more, try to write it in your own voice and think of it more as a way to study and learn about your topic than have the writing done ...
Interview: Morgan Parker on 'You Get What You Pay For: Essays'
Morgan Parker Says 'Poetry Is Under Everything' She Writes. Crafting the arguments in "You Get What You Pay For," her first essay collection, "felt like pulling apart a long piece of ...
The Cowardice of Guernica
00:00. 09:10. Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration. In the days after October 7, the writer and translator Joanna Chen spoke with a neighbor in Israel whose children ...
‎According to your English Teacher on Apple Podcasts
The Women: Deep Dive into topics Women & War. In this episode we will be tracking the two themes in this book. We will be looking at Women and War. These two themes are intertwined in the book, so it is perfect to look at both of them together. This book had so many powerful scenes, so we will take a look at those as we explore The Women. 32 min.
25 Books on Writing Every Writer Needs To Read
Story by Diana Kurzeja. • 2w. 1 / 27. 25 Books on Writing Every Writer Needs To Read ©Provided by Wealth of Geeks. One of the best ways to improve your writing is by reading. The more you read ...
Lauren Oyler Doesn't Take Her Work Too Seriously
Known for her meticulous and sometimes scathing book reviews, much-discussed article about going on the Goop Cruise, and her first novel, Fake Accounts, the writer Lauren Oyler has just released a ...
Writing My Autobiography by Joseph Epstein
In An Autobiography, Trollope disdains the notion of an author's needing inspiration to write well. He reports that "there was no day on which it was my positive duty to write for the publishers, as it was my duty to write reports for the Post Office," where he had a regular job. "I was free to be idle if I pleased.