If you have passionately followed with the pursuit of how stories are really told and, how film-making happens; this book is for you. I do have other books on cinema that are all-time favorites, but this one is special.
Even on those days, when I am not really interested to dig deeper down into the cinematic theories and jargon, and just want to have a casual page-turner on my desk, this James Monaco classic is a great savior. I own a hard copy of this book from an edition which (I think) has a lesser influence from the YouTube phenomena (as in, the digital leverage).
I think we are thriving in an ecosystem that has double leverage (at least). We have an entrepreneurial setup in a creator-heavy environment. The relevance to this context is that nearly through the germination of cinema and other storytelling histories; we learn the same rules of innovations, risk management, and story-telling.
The time shift from the reels to the bytes and data has been enormous and in contrast, the stickiness of emotion and drama in our stories has been always the same.
I have not tried to elucidate any part of the book, or even attempted at a loose trailer of the same. I think it will be both callous and audacious to even try anything as such. But, if you really want to turn off that odd recommendation of a random vlog on cinema with some cut snippets of classics from the BnW era. Go turn off the data and flip the pages of this one.
Monaco: How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, and Beyond
I have that book, interesting about film language and film history.
I'm reading too "IN the blink of an Eye", about editing.