This book showed up in my recommendations on my Kobo account months back and the title really intrigued me. It also fit in with the attention I’ve been giving the Zero to Well-Read podcast diving anew into classic literature. As I read through stuff like The Maltese Falcon and books from the various inspirational media lists from RPGs I have, I’ve started thinking more about the literary analysis I did in high school and college English classes and how I might make use of those skills while drawing inspirations for my games from my own reading. To clarify, I read the Third Edition of the book from 2022.While the topic of literary analysis might evoke images of stuffy university lecture halls and the One True Symbol we were taught to seek in Great Literature, the book reads more like a discussion over drinks with your buddy who happens to teach English at the local college. The chapters have names like “When in Doubt, it’s from Shakespeare” and “Never Stand Next to the Hero.” The tone is informal and, like the chapter titles, occasionally quippy.I really like some of the advice like “if you think you see a symbol, you probably do,” or the discussion of how when you read a book it ends up in a discussion with all the other books you’ve read. Foster also uses a great mix of classic Canon books and more modern reads to illustrate how to use literary analysis to get more out of your reading.Overall, I had a lot of fun going through the box of tools. There’s a lot here about how to use weather and specific tropes to evoke a certain mood and response. I think there’s a lot here that’s good for a game master looking to draw more and better inspiration from what they read. Or just the reader looking to get more meaning from their books. It’s approachable in tone. It breaks the tools down simply and gives examples. There’s a lot of trust of the reader here. I really enjoyed it.
