A Collection of Improving Exercises is tabletop game disguised as a drawing manual from the 1920s. It is a role playing game, more than anything else, though it is not a traditional example of the form by any means. Layered in the game text is a poetic meditation on death, eternity, and loneliness. There are moments of horror and revulsions that can only be discovered by actually doing the drawing exercises described in the book as if you, the reader, are a student of perspective drawing.

The 'book' that is the game is made up of a series of short lessons in perspective drawing, a collection of inspirational quotes from the bloviating author, and one hundred drawing exercises.

The lessons are legitimate but nothing else is as it seems. The author is a character with a distinct voice and who uses my own name, Tim Hutchings. Over the course of the book the author's quotes grow increasingly nonsensical, moving from the banal to the comical to the paranoiac.  

The drawing exercises go through an arc of revelation. The books subtitle indicates that the reader will practice drawing still lives found on the beach–bottles and the things a beachcomber might discover. And so you do. And therein lies a story about dying silently and alone.

This is a solo game, of sorts. The reader/player will be alone when they read or otherwise operate the book, but I also see it as a two-player game in which I as the author am playing a game with readers I'll never meet.  

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Also titled "A Continued Introduction to Perspective Drawing Techniques Suitable for Intertidal Scapes and Still Lives; the Workbook, Volume II in a Series" by Tim Hutchings, dated 1924.

Item description: The interior is printed in black and red ink. The handsome end pages are a red pattern with white dots. The book has ostentatious gilt page edges. The blue cloth hardcover has handsome designs in silver and gold foil on front, back, and spine.

From Goodreads: This book, copyrighted 1924, is part of a series of drawing manuals authored by Timothy Brian Hutchings. While a large number of this specific volume are known it is not known if examples from the rest of the series are extant. It is possible that the other books in the series were never actually printed, or that the disposable nature of the books means that none survive.

While this book does contain cursory instructions regarding perspective drawing it is meant to be an adjunct to another book which is presumed lost. Nonetheless, the exercises in the book may prove useful to budding artists of all skill levels.

The book as a whole has twelve pages of instruction, twenty-eight pages with literary excerpts or weighty quotes from the author regarding the art and science of perspective drawing, around 6300 words, and roughly one hundred drawing exercises. Each exercise is isolated on its own page and it seems that the artist is expected to draw within the book. There are four pages with handsome illustrations, one of which repeats at the beginning and end of the book.

It is the opinion of this reviewer that any value in this book lies in the exercises. The conceit is that reader/artist is a romantic beachcomber and each exercise introduces a new item washed up by the sea. For example, Exercise 9 reads "A cluster of glass or cork fishing floats. Five minute time limit. The sun reflecting in the glass is blinding; the view through the glass, distorted."

All in all it is a curiosity of limited utility but is a novel read even if the exercises are skipped.