What’s the point of writing a book review, other than to do a favor for your friend who just self-published on a course in miracles bookstore get me wrong; the author will appreciate the effort. However, any brownie points you score with the author are secondary. If you think I’m about to tell you that book reviews make good content for search engine optimization purposes… you’re right. They do. But that’s not the primary benefit I’m talking about, either. Am I about to suggest that writing anything, even a book review, is a great practice to hone your skills as a writer? Well, actually, yes! But that’s not the point I wrote this article to make.
Here’s what I’m driving at. If you read a book about marketing your business, a book review will help you to actually market your business. Read a book about organizing your home? Write a book review, and watch the piles of clutter start to shrink around you. Don’t ask me to prove it. If you want proof, do it and see what happens.
For years, I have read books and thought up great ideas, only to put the books back onto the shelf without taking any action. I know I’m not the only one. I don’t have a complete solution to this problem, but I do have a tool to offer you that may inch you a single step forward: the book review. Have you ever read a positive attitude or self-help book, for example, and pledged to adopt the habits they prescribed? Ever read a novel whose protagonist inspired you to write the Great American Novel? If you’re like most readers, the urge probably didn’t last any longer than a TV commercial.
Let’s Face It: human nature isn’t likely to change any time soon. With an ever-expanding menu of shiny objects to distract us and a 24-hour day that stubbornly refuses to grow any longer, the average human attention span continues to dwindle into the microsecond-scale. Is it any wonder that literary inspiration has such a short shelf life? A book review isn’t going to change that, of course, but the process of re-creating your experience through a review will refresh your memory of the book, and it will give others a window into the world that the book’s author has created. You just might inspire someone to read the book who wouldn’t have read it otherwise.