Sijie Dai, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Vintage, 2003);
Book Review Instructions
1. Your review should begin with a brief introduction of the book, describing its genre (a story, an autobiography or a monograph) and topic (what is described, analyzed or examined in the book);
2. Use your own language to offer a summary of the book, which should constitute about half of the total length of your review—the other half should be spent on covering 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 as explained below;
3. The summary should quote terms, concepts, phrases and even paragraphs used by the author(s) in the book, which you think are important to understand its content. Wherever you quote (using quotation marks), you should follow it with a citation, which can take either the form of a footnote or the form of an in-text citation, such as (Jones 2006, 23) or simply (p. 23) if it is from the book under review;
4. After the summary, you should offer some information on the professional training, education, cultural background etc. of the author(s)—feel free to do some research on the author(s). Then you should discuss what the author(s)’s intention was to write the book and whether or not the author(s) has/have an ax to grind in writing it;
5. Identify the book’s main argument or thesis, or the central idea (of a novel), the author intends to prove or convey, and discuss it—e.g. whether you agree or disagree with it;
6. Comment on the book’s organization, style, use of sources etc. and evaluate whether all these features have helped the author(s) to present the argument/thesis and enhance the book’s value and readability;
7. Discuss whether the reading of the book has helped you to understand relevant issues discussed in the class. Regardless of your answer (yes, no, somewhat), you should explain it with specific examples cited from the book;
8. Finish the review with whatever personal thoughts that occurred to you in your reading.
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