#82 - Beginner's Reflection(48) - the Structure of a Book

Hi, everyone!

Happy Monday!

Have you ever planned to write your own book? Do you know how to organize the content of it?

Recently, I've been reading a very interesting book and I have spent some time to analyze its content and structure. Today, I am going to share some of what I've found in this book related to format and structure.

The book I've been reading is called "Belong", written by Radha Agrawal, who I have never heard before, but the book itself is very good and worth the time. It's not a big book, only about two hundreds pages, which is controllable for me to have an examination on it.

Now, let's see how the author organizes what she wants to say and express it in some particular form or structure.

Before you write of anything, you have to tell the reader what they are about to read. In books, their titles play that role, they tell the reader the main themes they would cover. For the book I am analyzing, its title is "Belong", which means in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary:

1. to be in the right or suitable place.

2. to feel happy or comfortable in a situation.

By this title, "Belong", do you know what this book is going to talk about?

Probably. For almost all the titles of books, they are very general, even abstract, so that they can cover more content, such as "Improving Your Relationship", "30 DAYS TO TAMING YOUR TONGUE", or "What Do You Stand For".

To make the meaning of the title more concise, some book has an additional short phrase to elaborate the title, we call it a subtitle. In "Belong", it has a subtitle, "Find Your People, Create Community & Live a More Connected Life", how do feel about the book now after you read the title and its subtitle?

The combination of the main title and the subtitle tells the reader more clearly what the book is about.

After we've known the title and the subtitle of a book, we want to know who wrote the book. In our case, the author of "Belong" is Radha Agrawal.

Many authors are very new in the publishing world, so we need more information about them. The author, Radha Agrawal, is very new, probably "Belong" is her first book, few readers know her, so
there has a some short introduction of her, "CEO & Co-founder Daybreaker & Co-founder THINX", which gives us more information about the author.

Ok, it is time to examine the content of "Belong":

. Foreword. In the book, before the main content, there is a chapter called "Foreword", which is like an introduction of the book. It isn't written by the author but by another person, John Mackey, Co-founder & CEO Whole Foods Market, which is not uncommon, many books do the same, because, you know, people help each other.

. Two parts. There are two parts in the book:

I. Going in

II. Going out

. Chapters. Each part includes several chapters and each chapter has a main title and a subtitle, such as:

Chapter 1

My Epiphany

How Community Changed My Life

. Sections. The content of a chapter is divided into one or more sections, and each section includes one or more subsections. For example:

Section: The Mean Girls of Your Mind

Subsection 1: Let’s Talk About Comparison, Perfectionism, and Judgment

Subsection 2: Social Media on Perfectionism and Judgment

After the main content, there are two parts at the end:

I. Acknowledgments: Where the author thanks for people who are very helpful for the author's life or for the publishing of the book.

II. About the Author: You guess it!

Alright, let's end this chapter here and I will go deeper into this book in the future.

Thanks for your patience and let's read more good books!

Be nature and be free!

^
August 5th, 2019 at 06:22am