Book Reviews are My Friends

After publishing this post, I was told in no uncertain terms by academic and non-academic friends that writing Chapter 1 of The Thesis on the basis of book reviews was entirely unacceptable.

I completely, totally, and utterly agree. (And for the record, I have never written a review of literature using this method.)

So, I suppose that my only excuse for this post was a momentary lapse of sanity.

You see, I had about twenty different books and innumerable articles that I needed to finish reading by the end of that week. But after four days of reading, I was still on the first book and growing increasingly frustrated with my slow progress.

Some of my slow progress was rooted in the author’s terrible style of writing. The author is a scholar-in-actuality, but he apparently missed (or skipped) the classes on how to write a paragraph and how to construct an argument.

Most of my slow progress, however, was rooted in a frustration with the contents of the book. I suspected that the author’s application of his methodology was inconsistent and that his evaluation of evidence was incomplete. But as I’m not an expert in this methodology or this body of evidence, I couldn’t be sure.

And after spending five days reading this entire book, I was still unsure as to whether he had convincingly argued his thesis.

So, I went and read reviews of this book. And I am not ashamed of this fact. Not one bit.

You see, other scholars-in-actuality criticized his style of writing and argumentation. And experts in this methodology and body of evidence criticized his haphazard application of the former and his irresponsible use of the latter. And there was not even one reviewer who had been convinced by his thesis.

So, dear friends, you may all rest assured that I will personally read all of the literature that I need to review.

But when I’m not sure about my evaluation of this literature, you can also be sure that I will be consulting my friends in the book review section.