Book reviews are a great way to evaluate the reception of a particular book, are a form of literary criticism, and are often published in newspapers, magazines, and journals.

Understanding what type of book review you need will determine the best place to look. Generally, you might seek either (1) a review of a literary work, or (2) a review of an academic text written by a scholar around a given topic.

Looking for book reviews of academic books can be especially helpful during the research process as they provide a quicker way for you to determine which texts best fit your needs without having to read every book. Academic book reviews can provide not only summary information, but will offer criticism and comment on the quality of the text and it's place within the larger realm of scholarship that it belongs.

Note: Academic books might have both journalistic book reviews and scholarly book reviews. Journalistic book reviews offer short descriptions about the book written soon after publication that both help librarians decide on books to purchase, but also can help scholars stay abreast with what is being published. Scholarly book reviews are often more geared towards scholars in the field and are typically longer so they can go into more detail. You can often tell which you are looking at by both the length of the review and the nature of the journal in which it's being published.

For contemporary reviews of literary works, it's best to locate newspapers and periodicals from the time of publication. There are multiple places you can begin to search including some of the databases the library subscribes to. The title of the work will often be the title of the review.

A lot of scholarly journals have sections dedicated to book reviews in them and so by extension many of our databases include book reviews. You can usually search using the title in quotes and the author as keywords along with the word "review." Try searching the following databases for scholarly book reviews:

If these are unsuccessful, you might also try searching generally on APPsearch, using Google Scholar, or asking the library.

Getting in the habit of scanning book reviews is a great way to stay current and on top of the publications that are occurring in your particular field. Here are some titles you might consider browsing or you can try to locate relevant journals that match your interests.

Here are two strategies you can use to find relevant journals:

1. Search e-Journals Portal

The e-Journals portal on the library's home page allows you to search journal titles that we have electronic access to. Consider searching the author's name, the literary approach you are using (i.e. feminism or feminist), the genre, etc.

2. Search the MLA Directory of Periodicals

The MLA Directory of Periodicals is a great way to find journal titles in the literary world.