Literary Analysis and Book Reports

A Literary Analysis Essay is an argument about a book's meaning. It answers a question that can maybe have more than one answer.

A Book report tells the summary about a book's story or plot. You tell about the characters and how the characters made up the plot of the story.

When you are writing a literary essay you are answering a question that someone is asking you about a specific meaning or purpose of/in a story which is the main difference between a Literary essay and a book report. 

I prefer  doing book reports simply because they are easier :) 

I like telling other people about stories as well as writing them. I'm not much of an argumentative person. It is really hard for me to fully analyze a story and argue about a certain character or plot idea. I think it takes the wonder out of a story! I love reading a story and becoming the character and being part of the story. I would much rather tell about a good story and simply enjoy it; or maybe tell why I don't like this story and maybe just hear someone else's opinion. Literary essays makes it more of an experiment to be argued about and not something  that can be enjoyed. I especially don't see pulling apart and analyzing (for example) a fictional story where you know it's not real. Why not just enjoy it and let your mind wonder and believe in fairy tales!! Writing a book report is a much more fun way to summarize and tell people about the wonderful enjoyment that you get from it and not make it a debate subject.