Instructions. You must produce a 5-6 page book review of one of the books False Dawn, Small is Beautiful or Fooled by Randomness, and submit the hardcopy to the box marked “EC4004 Book Reviews”, near the Department Office, KB 3-22a. References don’t count towards the page count. You must also submit a copy of your .doc file to Turnitin using the naming convention. EC4004_BookReview_Yourname_yourstudentnumber.doc. No lateness will be tolerated. You will lose 99% of your mark per day of lateness. This book review is worth 25% of your grade. The relevant deadlines will be given in lectures.

Formatting & Plagiarism. Please format the essay in Times New Roman, size 12 font, 1.5 line spacing. Include a titlepage with your name, student number, and the book you are reviewing. For the printed version (obviously), staple the pages together in the top left hand corner. There is no need for report booklets or binding References aren’t strictly necessary, but if you use references, use the Harvard referencing style, for details refer to the Citeitright guide. Remember that if you take material from someone else’s work, or use tables or figures from somewhere else, you must cite it. A handy rule is that if you’re copying and pasting something, you should reference that text or graphic’s source.

An opportunity will be given for feedback on your book review.

How do I write a book review?

First, just read the book. Don’t take any notes, just read it as you would any other book. Get a sense of it. Second, re-read the book, only this time, with a pen and a pad beside you. Take notes, now that the text is familiar to you. This will be much quicker than trying to read and understand and take notes all at once. Ask yourself: What is the structure of the book? How does the author develop their argument? What is the context of the book? When was it written? Why does the author choose to address that particular problem, or use that particular subject?
Now, begin talking about the book with other people. Tell your parents and friends about the book. Describe it to them, ask them for their thoughts on the subject matter of the book. Note what they say. Remember your job is to make the connections between this book and today’s Irish economic experience.
Begin writing. Open a word processor, save the file after the first word to at least 2 places. Use Dropbox. Call the file EC4004_Bookreview_Yourname_Yourstudentnumber.doc. Keep saving the thing in 2 different places (USB key, email to yourself, Dropbox, whatever) every 10 minutes. Your implied reader is another classmate who hasn’t read the book. First, in a paragraph or two, summarise the book. Then, write a little bit about the author. An author is a part of their book, and vice versa. But don’t just give me two lines from Wikipedia. Now tell us what you think about the book: does it achieve its aims? Is it well written? Don’t tell me if you enjoyed it or not. That will be obvious from the prose. Tell me your thoughts on the book (this will be helped immensely by your discussions with friends). Tell me how, exactly, you think this book can help explain or inform what is going on in the Irish economy at the moment.

Relate the book to the Irish Economy. You must relate the subject matter of the book to Ireland’s current economic situation. What is there in this book that could inform the current government, or its policy makers? To get a good grade, you must show that you’ve thought about the book’s relevance to today’s Irish economy. I do not want regurgitated wikipedia articles. I want your thoughts. Do not plagiarize, I will check for plagiarism using Turnitin.com.

Finally, once you’ve finished your first draft, spell check it, print it out, and read it out loud to yourself. When a sentence sounds odd, change it. Reread it again. Now read Deirdre McCloskey’s Economical Writing (or my one page notes of her book) to polish your submission.

In summary, a book review is not just a summary of a book. It is a digestion. You are to read the book, discuss it with friends, if you have any, with imaginary ones if you don’t. You are to make copious notes, think about the book when out doing other things, and try, as much as possible, to relate your own experience (and, importantly, the experience of the Irish economy today) to the book’s subject matter. You will find many things online about these books. Ignore them. I want what *you* think about the book, and what you take from the book. If you give me a report taken from wikipedia or somewhere else, I’ll fail you instantly. Remember, I’ll be checking each review through our plagiarism-spotter, Turnitin.