You may benefit from searching the following:
Book Reviews: At the time of publication, and sometimes again if something is translated or re-printed, books are reviewed in magazines and newspapers and journals. Authors may be staff on a publication, another writer, or a scholar offering an opinion of a work at the time of its release.
Literary Criticism: Published in journals, criticism analyzes a work and its themes, questions, significance. Typically written by scholars, who may be professors or researchers at a university who have studied an author or a work in depth and for some time.
Q: But...they call the folks writing the reviews, critics...so, is it criticism? Is it scholarly?
A: Not typically! Take a look at this criteria:
| Review | Criticism |
| Usually written at the time a work was made | Can be written at any time, but is usually written long after the fact when other sources can be contextualized into an analysis |
| Written by a journalist or publication staff or the publication invites a guest writer to review. | Written by a scholar/academic who studies theory within the discipline |
| Plot summary, overall consideration of style, performances, direction and production | May deal with a narrow aspect of the work, such as a scene/chapter/character or creative decision made by creator |
| Critiques the work from a cultural or entertainment perspective at the time the work was made, and often in relation to the creator's body of work | Discusses the work in theoretical or historical context |
| Usually quite short (less than one page in a publication) | Long, usually 10 or more pages in a journal |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Generic License.