Thanks for the feedback - glad you liked it!
Our game was admittedly a bit ambitious for a two-day game jam. We ran out of time to add the books we made to the game, so the amount of burnable items is a lot lower than we anticipated - as a result, it's impossible to stay alive for long. We may make a content patch when the game jam is over to resolve this, as we just need to add more titles (they're randomly spread through the bookshelves anyway).
That's also why we had no tutorial - we would have loved to introduce the mechanics by starting the player off with the first journal entry being read and subsequently tossed in the fire (or something similar!). Trust me, the fact the balancing even works somewhat in the beginning of the game is pure coincidence ;).