Catching Up With HouseMouse Books
HouseMouse Books and Vintage has entered its second year of operations and I wanted to check in to see how things are going.
Orly Keiner, the store’s owner, shares her thoughts below. You can check out my first conversation with Keiner here.
This interview has been edited lightly.
What does everybody need to know about Escape the Bookshop II?
Escape the Bookshop II is a cooperative group puzzle game in the “escape room” style. It is played inside HouseMouse Books and Vintage at times when the shop is closed to other customers: Wednesdays–Saturdays at 8pm. The mystery that the players solve is based on a real crime that took place here in Takoma Park over 130 years ago. It’s a really fun way to interact with the books, keys, maps, and other vintage items in the shop! The game costs $200 for a group of up to six players. It’s designed with adults in mind, so we’ve set the age limit at 16.
We’re running it from January through April, and are thrilled that it is booking up nicely. There are still some slots available, and you can book the game on our Google Calendar.
When did you come up with this idea?
I was inspired to design our first escape room, which ran in Spring 2023, when I saw how much some people were really responding to the shop’s cozy, quirky atmosphere. I felt like there might be interest in creative ways to spend time in that atmosphere beyond just book shopping. I also personally really enjoy escape rooms and thought I might try my hand at designing one.
Escape the Bookshop II is a whole new game, this time designed with a local focus in mind. People can be so passionate about living in Takoma Park, and it seemed fun to me to make the game a bit more bespoke … designed for this town, about this town, by someone in this town. It’s not like a generic “Sherlock Holmes”-themed room that you can do anywhere. I hope it feels a bit more special to the players.
Are you considering any other ways to use the HouseMouse space?
The shop’s tiny size can be a bit limiting. That said, I’ve got a few other ideas that are brewing … but nothing I’d want to share yet :).
Let’s zoom out. HouseMouse has been open for a little over a year. Do you have any prominent takeaways from your first year in business?
So many lessons learned this year. Coming to this with no business background, it’s been a whole education for me. I’ve realized that the shop is just as much an art project for me as it is a business, so I’ve learned to lean into the creativity aspects of it.
Probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that it’s important to be true to yourself rather than seek to have mass appeal. You can’t please everyone anyway, so I don’t do anything that doesn’t feel right to me and if something does feel right I run with it regardless of how weird it might be. It’s a good life lesson to have reinforced in general.
Keeping tight curation is also really important. If I keep a high standard for what deserves a place on the shelf, customers really do notice and respond to it.
I’ve also learned that it’s important to keep an even keel about things. Some days in the shop are amazing, both in terms of sales and interactions with people, while some are disappointing. But it’s important not to get too elated or dejected about the whole project based on a day or a weekend. This can be hard when the shop sometimes feels like an act of self-expression.
Turning to book sales. Would it be possible to share a couple of the shop’s most popular authors?
Unsurprisingly, we sell a lot of modern classics — Franz Kafka, James Baldwin, Nikolai Gogol, Kurt Vonnegut, Agatha Christie, George Orwell, Shirley Jackson, Virginia Woolf, Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and any of the Beat Generation writers are always in high demand.