We imagine LEGO sells a fair bit of their modular building series, as the line seems to just keep growing over the years. We don’t know how many of the sets you’ve picked up in that time, but dedicated collectors can definitely build a miniature city with lots of different buildings with all those varied models. The latest addition is the LEGO Creator Expert Bookshop, which lets you add an old-school bookstore and a townhouse to the mix.
That’s right, you can now put a bookshop in your tabletop town, so your minifigures can have a place to buy books, sell books, and browse books while killing time during the day. You can even have a minifig author do a talk on one of the building’s three stories, have a book burning after an authoritarian leader takes power, or turn it into a gateway to hell like in the movie The Ninth Gate. Hey, it’s your bookshop, you can make it whatever kind you wish.
The LEGO Creator Expert Bookshop set consists of two interconnecting buildings: a three-story book store and a two-story townhouse. A tall tree stands in front of the library, along with a small shelf of books, quite possibly on sale, sitting right behind it. Open the library door to give your minifigs access to the ground floor interior, which hosts even more bookshelves and a staircase leading to a mezzanine area, where, we assume, all the cool books are hidden. The second floor, on the other hand, looks more like a living area where the shop owner retires after closing, complete with a balcony in the back, where your minifigs can read books while chilling in two chairs and a table. Each level, by the way, can be easily removed to help you better appreciate the detailed interior. It stands a tall 11 inches.
The two-story townhouse, on the other hand, feature a sparsely decorated home, with some basic furnishings, a staircase, a small balcony on the second floor, and even a basement, so your serial killer minifigs can have a place to hide their victims. Or something. As with other sets in the modular building series, the buildings can be snapped together on either side, built separately, or snapped next to any of the other buildings included in the series.
The LEGO Creator Expert Bookshop comes with 2,504 pieces, so this is quite a big project that can keep you busy for hours on end. When assembled with both buildings joined together, it measures 11 x 9 x 9 inches (height x width x depth), so this will make a nice standalone display on any shelf, all while making your tabletop street look a whole lot busier. It also includes five minifigures, four adults and a kid, to help populate your tabletop town, along with multiple accessories like books, a toy plane, plants, a sled, a ladder, random birds, and various household items.
The LEGO Creator Expert Bookshop comes out in January, priced at $179.99.