Book reports are the old standby for classroom writing assignments. You’ll find many suggested ways to write a report about a book you’ve just read.
But more difficult, and perhaps more interesting, is to write about a book that you have not yet read, but want to read or are thinking about reading. This means you have to examine your own motivations, not recount a plot or arguments of a book you’ve just completed.
Why do you want to read this particular book? Was it because of what others have said, because of the “buzz”? Is it the subject matter? Is it the cover? There are many reasons why someone might want to read a specific book. What’s interesting here are YOUR reasons for reading a book. This is pure opinion, and opinions can be interesting if there’s thought behind them.
For today’s assignment, write a brief explanation of your reasons for reading a book that you have not yet read. While you may list the book’s author and title, most of the essay should be about you. Why do you want to read this book? Why now and not some other time? What attracted your interest to the book? And what do you expect to get out of reading it?
If you’re like me, you have a stack of unread books somewhere nearby (or electronically aligned on your digital shelves). Pick one out and ask yourself this question: why do I want to read this? Answer it fully and completely in this essay.
For bonus points, read the book after you’ve completed the essay and then write a companion essay telling what you got out of reading the book, whether it met your expectations and desires, and what surprised you.
The Writing Assignment: Write About Books You Want To Read by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.