Lesson 2 Week 1 Term 1

It's good to see more people visiting the blog, and I've had some requests such as adding a tag board. It's a great idea, so I''ll be adding that once I figure out how :)

Anyway, for our second lesson, we cleared up some words/ideas we may have missed during the first lesson, and then we moved ahead to Chapter 2: Review and Rewind. Do read the other autobiographical or biographical texts in Chapter 1 on your own, though, and try and see what differences and similarities there are between the different passages. Have you read any other autobiographies or biographies? It's now become the fashion for celebrities (football players especially!) to write autobiographies and tell 'their side' of the story. Do share if you've read any interesting ones!

Now on to the main focus of our second lesson - book reviews. We looked at a book review of Lemony Snicket's 'An Unfortunate Series Of Events' by Julia Durango. We read the review, and noted some of the features commonly found in book reviews. Some of these include:

- the reviewer may include quotes from the book or mimic the style of the author so as to give the reader a better idea of what to expect from the book

- the reviewer will also make his opinion of the book quite clear from the beginning. The reader can usually tell from the title of the review or perhaps the first line or paragraph what attitude the reviewer has towards the book.

- we looked at the author's use of connectives to organise ideas within an essay, and follow smoothly from one paragraph to the next.

- we discussed whether the reviewer's job is to convince the reader to agree with his or her opinion of the book, or simply to give the reader enough information to decide for themselves. What do you think? The answer may not be so simple...

Although the reviewer should be objective and fair, reviewers often try to be creative and adopt a certain style of their own while writing their review. After all, if the review appears in a magazine or newspaper, these publications (which are profit-seeking businesses after all) would prefer an entertaining review that attracts readers. Therefore, while the review is supposed to give readers an idea of what the book or movie is like, it's not exactly a 'public service'. The reviewer may also want to show off his writing skills and produce an entertaining piece. Sometimes a controversial reviewer can help pull regular readers, because people want to know what 'Reviewer X' feels about the book. Directors, playwrights and authors have been known to fear certain reviewers who can be very scathing in their comments.

We also briefly discussed how it can be useful to compare the book you are reviewing to other similar books, either by the same author or other authors. This shows that the reviewer has a breadth of knowledge and can make objective comparisons. If you are reviewing books form the fantasy genre such as Harry Potter, it might be useful to point out the differences and similarities between Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl, which is also a book involving fantasy characters but with a slight twist.

One other thing we discussed is how the gender and age of the reviewer could influence how the review is written. Een the publication the review is included in matters - whether it is published in Teen Magazine or 8 Days would make a difference in terms of how the review is written because of the different readership of the two magazines. One targets an audience comprising mostly teenage girls, while the other targets mostly young adults and housewives.

Well, that's all for now! If I've forgotten something, do let me know! Have a great weekend :)

~Mr. Ahmad