1. Place the Village board in the center of the play area. Make sure it is the correct player count side of the board (noted on lower right). Then place the yellow Sun token on the Sun track, set to the correct number of players.

Solo rule: place the token on the two-player starting position.

2. Place all special tokens near the Village board, to include both Wild books, the Lamp, the Bookend, and 4 Lucky Kitties. These are not used during play until they are specifically called upon by a card effect. Then place all Book tiles (32 each of 4 colors) into the cloth bag and shuffle them together.

3. Draw books randomly from the bag and add these books to the Bookstore Shelves along the top edge of the Village board: 3 books at random in the leftmost slot, 2 books in the center, and 1 book in the rightmost slot.

4. Shuffle all the Little Project cards to form the Little Projects deck and place it beside the Village board. Deal out one Little Project card face-up to each Bookstore Shelf along the top edge of the Village board, above the Book tiles you placed.

5. Shuffle all Other Neat Stuff cards together to form the Other Neat Stuff deck and place it to the right side of the Village. Place two of these cards face-up as the active Neat Stuff available in the Village Shoppes.

6. Shuffle all Major Accomplishment cards together and deal out 3 of them face-up near the Village board. Place the rest back in the box - they will not be used for this game.

For each player:

7. Choose a player color and collect all that color's components in front of you:

a. your Apartment board

b. Player card

c. Player meeple

d. your 3 Major Accomplishment tokens.

e. your Social Battery token

8. Pull from the bag the Books shown in Your Starting Collection (see XXX). On each space with gold dots in your apartment, place down one Book tile at random from your hand for each dot shown.". (4, 3, 3, 2)

9. Deal 5 Little Project cards to each player. These are kept in your hand and are not revealed to other players. Choose the 3 that look easiest to complete, then discard the rest face-up to form a discard pile beside the Little Project deck.

10. The player who most recently acquired a new book will be the first player. Play will proceed clockwise around the table. The first player sets their Social Battery tracker to 3, the second player to 4, third player to 5, and fourth player to 6.

Solo rule: You are the first player. Set your Social Battery tracker to 3.

Solo setup additional steps (do the below ONLY if you are playing a solo game):

You will also need these components:

• 1 Penelope reference card

• 14 Rival cards, lettered A - N

11. Place the Penelope reference card to one side of your play space.

12. Assemble the 10-card Rival deck based on your preferred challenge level & shuffle them.

a) Level 1 - A through J (easiest)

b) Level 2 - B through K

c) Level 3 - C through L

d) Level 4 - D through M

e) Level 5 - E through N (hardest)

13. Take the 1st Player token and flip it to the Penelope side. Then place beside the Penelope reference card. This is Penelope's player token.