book-info-examples
Information Commonly Given About Books
hReview prominently doesn't include a way to markup the author of a book. This makes sense for other kinds of reviews, but it seems glaringly deficient for books. This collection of information is intended as a starting point for a discussion about how hBookReview should differ. I'm expecting to find that most book review sites list the authors' names prominently. I'm googling around for book review blogs and other book review sites. Here are some from the first two pages of Googling.
reviews-formats has some discussion of formats for reviews, including book reviews. Some of the formats use creator as an equivalent for a work's author. Others use author, and sometimes they mean review-author, and other times work-author.
Information about a book that will commonly appear in a book review includes:
- book title
- book author
- book editor(s)
- book translator
- price
- publisher
- date of publication
- number of pages
- ISBN
The goal should be to develop a standard way of marking up this book information, which then can be included within an hreview.
Book Reviews
- Metacritic's front page is a list of reviewed books, all are accompanied by the author's name. On the review page, the author's name appears in span class="subhead".
- BookClan has reviews and discussion. No special markup of the authors, but they always accompany the title.
- Ghost Word uses Strong to mark authors.
- Book Blog makes a span called "PostTitle" that includes the title (in a subspan) and the author.
- Book Review Blog puts title and (parenthesized) author in a link to Amazon.com.
- Jedi Master has two book reviews, and includes the author in the title once, and in the text in the other.
- Mercury News Reviews has book reviews every week. No one should be surprised to hear that the authors are always listed in the subheading.
- Times Literary Supplement is a publication dedicated to book reviews. For a specific example see The polyrhythms of life. Most academic reviews display the title, author, press, price, and ISBN.
- The Virginia Quarterly Review is another journal of literature and reviews. For a specific book review example see The Crimes of My Enemy. It includes the book title, book author, press, date of publication, and price.
Other discussions of Books
- amazon displays books with title, author, price, rating, and cover thumbnail. Of these, the author and cover picture are always links. The author link takes you to other works by the author, and the cover thumbnail takes you to a blowup.
- Libraries have a few standard search categories: Author, Title, Subject, and catalogue number (ISBN, LoC, etc.).
CounterExamples
- 800 CEO Read usually includes the author's name, but doesn't highlight it in any distinctive way.
- Digital Web Magazine reviews technical books, and is inconsistent about mentioning authors. Sometimes the title and author are included in a pull quote, while at other times, the author is lost completely. They seem to think readers aren't interested in the authors when the books are merely technical manuals.