I’ve been losing sleep playing Tiny Book Shop, a game that was released on Steam and the Nintendo eShop earlier this month. You play as someone who moves to a small coastal town to run a mobile bookstore out of a trailer you pull with your car.
I loved to read when I was younger. That hobby waned as I hit high school. More often than not, I wouldn’t read the books I was assigned and faked my way through projects, if I’m being honest.
I always mean to start again. I’ve been in a vicious cycle for years where I go to the library and check out a bunch of books, get overwhelmed by how many I took out, not know which one to start with, read none of them, max out the amount of times I can renew them, still return them way later than that, and pay quite a bit in fines. And then the process starts again.
I am always somewhere in this cycle. I do not learn. I live a mile away from the library and have books I’ve been meaning to take back for over a week. I was using a hardcover book I’ve checked out multiple times and never started as a mousepad while I was playing. (The Sign for Home by Blair Fell, if you’re wondering.)
I did finish a handful of books earlier this year and have been slowly picking through one for the past month, I will give myself that.
Back to the game– it checks the only box I have for games: you can play even if you’re miserable at video games, which I very much am. Pathetically so for someone who had unrestricted access to a computer before they could even read. (No doubt at a huge detriment to my development. Don’t recommend. I feel great concern and genuine sorrow for ‘iPad babies’, but that is all its own can of worms.)
It’s really cute and laid-back! You acquire books sorted into several genres, stock your shelves, and set out. You can go to different areas of the town and get to know the residents. Sometimes people will ask you for recommendations, and you can sort through short summaries and characteristics of real books and try to give them something that appeals to them.
There’s already been a few book titles I’ve seen in the game that I’ve written down because they sounded really interesting. Will I read them? My history suggests probably not. But, as my library debacle exemplifies, I am nothing if not very stupidly optimistic and incapable of judging my own tendencies.
Well, there are worse things in the world.
Back to the little seaside book shop in my computer.
