Introduction
Book reviews can serve a variety of purposes: they can help you decide whether you'd like to read a book, or they can help you understand a book's place in the context of a larger scholarly conversation. There are two main categories of book reviews: general interest reviews of popular books, and scholarly book reviews. For this class you will be focusing on reviews of popular books. See below for more information and for links to useful tools for finding book reviews.
Books in the library
- The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature
- The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis
- Ursula K. LeGuin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults
- Fantasy, politics, postmodernity : Pratchett, Pullman, Miéville and stories of the eye
- Bodyminds reimagined : (dis)ability, race, and gender in black women's speculative fiction /
General Interest Book Reviews
About general interest book reviews:
- General interest reviews usually focus on popular books (memoirs, nonfiction, cookbooks, etc.) and works of literature.
- They often appear in newspapers and magazines such as the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the New Yorker, etc.
- They may be written by other authors or by journalists.
- General interest book reviews usually appear soon after a book's publication.
The following indexes will help you locate general interest book reviews:
Book Review Index Plus (Gale)Indexes reviews of fiction and nonfiction English-language books. Reviews are selected from academic journals, magazines, and library review journals. Includes selected full text. Coverage goes back to the early 1960s.
Book Review Digest Plus (EBSCO)Indexes reviews of fiction and nonfiction English-language books. Reviews are selected from academic journals and library review journals. Includes selected full text. Coverage goes back to the early 1980s.
Book Review Digest Retrospective, 1903-1982 (EBSCO)Indexes reviews of fiction and nonfiction English-language books. Reviews are selected from academic journals, magazines, and library review journals. Covers reviews published between 1903 and 1982.
Book Review Journals
The Library provides online access to the following book review journals; click the FindIt button within each item's record to search or browse.
- London Review of Books (recent print issues are available in Current Periodicals on 1st floor of Falvey; website provides 4 free articles per month from current and back issues)
- New York Review of Books (available online from 1963 - present)
- New York Times Book Review (all back content available to the VU community via our NYTimes.com subscription; 1997- present available online via ProQuest)
- TLS, the Times Literary Supplement (available online from 2012 - present)
Historical Book Reviews
For older less recent books you will likely need to go to historical newspapers to find reviews. Make sure to check the dates of publication and then narrow by date range in your search.
New York Times: 1851- (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)
Times (London) Digital Archive, 1785-2019 (Gale)
New York Times: 1851- (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)Provides full text access to the complete New York Times archive except for the most recent five years. Use NYTimes.com, Nexis Uni, or ABI/INFORM for access to current content.
Times (London) Digital Archive, 1785-2019 (Gale)Provides a fully searchable facsimile of the Times of London. The Times is the world's oldest daily newspaper in continuous publication.