How do you determine the value of a book? Books on your book list have already been reviewed by your course. Probably the author is well known and appreciated and this book fits perfectly with the lessons. But how do you evaluate a book yourself? As mentioned earlier, you pay attention to relevance and reliability.
Relevance
Connection to question and purpose
Does the information fit the questions you have and/or the target audience you are writing for?
Is a book as an information medium appropriate for your information needs?
Does the book present a general picture?
Does the level meet your requirements? Also pay attention to authority here.
Completeness
Does the book give a complete picture or are more sources needed?
Topicality
Is current information relevant to your research?
What is the year of publication?
Is this the most recent printing?
Could you expect more recent developments in the meantime?
If other sources were referenced, how recent are they?
Reliability
Authority
Who is the author and what authority does this person have?
What is the author's background and this one has published something before?
Is there an editor or editors?
With what intention did the author write the book?
Correctness
Are the facts in the book correct?
Are opinions supported by facts?
Objectivity
Is the information presented objectively?
Does the book contain mostly facts or opinions?
What is the purpose of the book? Informative, opinionated, entertainment....
Book quality
Does the book look professional? Who published it?
Did the author use scholarly sources? A book with a short bibliography without scholarly sources is probably not appropriate
Verifiability
Are the facts or data verifiable?
Are the source citations correct? What are the sources?
This overview book explains concepts and theories. Several chapters and sections fit well with your questions. The level also fits well.
The information in the book seems quite complete and provides a lot of background information.
Reliability
The author is a scholar assigned to a university. She has written several books and articles and is well cited by others. The book itself has also been cited a number of times.
It is a textbook, written specifically for students. That is not a bad thing, but be sure to include other sources in your report that are more geared toward other scholars. The publisher is not a very well-known publisher, but it is an academic publisher. If you look on their website, one of the things you will see is that they work with universities, and the formatting and layout of the book also look professional.
The bibliography looks thorough with books from scholarly publishers, and recent peer reviewed articles. This list is referenced in the text, so checking the text is possible.