Hamlet's Hit Points

This odd little book about analyzing the "beats" of three dramatic works of stage and screen (Hamlet, Dr. No, Casablanca) as if they were sessions of a role-playing game serves pretty well at rewiring how your brain looks at scenes. The visual nature of the result of the technique also works pretty well, but a larger body of examples would make it patterns more evident. There is a bit more disagreement between the visual icons used and the text of the page (that is, editing mistakes) than you might expect, but they are easy to spot. If you like deconstructing stuff, this may be a book for you, even if you aren't a roleplayer.

Some very interesting ideas here. I'm not sure that they warrant a complete book, but presenting three protracted examples does tend to hammer home the points being made.

Well worth the time it took to read.