Let's go bookshelf snooping in games

A few years back, browsing on Instagram, I was delighted to see a book I knew. The spine of it, anyway: a perfect bolt of cheery gold, stacked neatly on a shelf by some plants. The book was Kenny Shopsin's life-changingly great cookbook Eat Me, which I absolutely recommend, and the shelf it was on formed part of a cookbook library in Shake Shack's test kitchen. I emailed Shake Shack about this, because I am weird and because I am always hoping for an invite to a test kitchen, but even before they got back to confirm that they loved Shopsin as much as I do, I knew I was right in my identification of that book. Shake Shack and Shopsin made a lot of sense. And seeing the book there on that shelf was a chance to spot a new, illuminating connection between two things I already loved.

Anyway. I've always been a bit of a bookshelf snooper. Not in friends' houses, necessarily, which always feels like a bit of a step too far. But the bookshelves of people I don't know feel like fair game. In movies, I always lean forward trying to see what the heroes and villains have on their shelves. On CNN I can't help but scan what the people being interviewed on Zoom have stacked behind them.

Games are great for this too, but in quite unusual ways. You rarely get that flash of recognition - the Shopsin, or that classic '70's Tolkein with the memorable yellow spine - from looking at a bookcase in a videogame. But you might get something else: a hint at what the developer values, a suggestion of how much time the team had to lavish on the little things. And more. So, let's go. Let's go bookshelf snooping in games.

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