One of the most common essays written for college courses is the Book Critique and yet few students are trained to critique books, much less write critically about a book..

A book critique is not the same as a book report. Some students will have written book critiques in high school but more often than not it was a book report that teachers asked for back then. Could be that students enrolled in college prep classes did critiques but if you weren't planning to move on to college back then, you're lacking what you need to know now, right?

A book report frequently tells what the topic was or what the storyline (in fiction) was.

A book critique does a rabid dog imitation and tears it apart looking for things that were good and things that weren't all that hot or downright bad in it.

To be able to write a book critique, you have to read the book (sorry, no way around this) and take a few notes along the way. You'll begin by picking out some elements (I'm not saying information, you'll note) to "think" with in writing the critique.

And that's what the "I Hate To Write" guide to Book Critiques will guide you to do!

After all, the "I Hate To Write" guides were written for students who...well, "Hate to Write" and yet now HAVE TO write. With the 21st century job market requiring new skills, more and more people who never planned to return to school are cornered into returning for associate or bachelor degrees. And landing one requires doing something so many of them hated doing in the past – writing essays.

The reasons why the majority of these "Surprise! I'm a student again!" folks fear the writing process is that in the past they...

* Stared failure in the face every time they had to write an essay, and received the sad grades that seemed to prove failure was achieved (and that was never the goal, right?)

* Were glad to put all types of writing behind them when they left high school because they never intended to go to college and now find some sort of college degree is needed for the workplace or to advance within the workplace and that means having to write things again

* Haven't written anything – particularly an essay – in ten, twenty years or more (although they had passing grades for essays back then) but now will need to take up a pen again to work toward landing that college degree and feel rusty or unsure of what professors are going to expect in essays

Sound like where you're at right now?

Chances are that the unease you're feeling is a result of never quite understanding what a teacher was telling you in relation to writing essays, or are now curious about what is expected since college is definitely different from high school. My goal in the "I Hate To Write" guides is to make it clear what's needed and supply easy steps to do each type of essay by not speaking "academic" but rather "normal people speak" to make everything clear.

College is about teaching you to think with information gathered in various ways. As a comparison, don't you do a bit of research when buying a car so that you get what features you want? This is nearly the same thing, only the topics are different and sometimes of absolutely no interest to you. College is also about expanding your mind, though, so grit your teeth and do what's necessary to land the grade you want.

And in this case, that involves writing a Book Critique.