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Hello and welcome to The Excerpt.

I'm Dana Taylor.

Today is Wednesday, November 6th, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt.

Okay. and this is a special episode of The Exert. Bob Manson is a retired teacher from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

He's also a super fan of independent bookstores, so much so that he's now visited over 600 of them across the country.

At each one, he talks with the owners and some regulars and then writes about what makes that

particular bookstore special in his ongoing blog, The Indy Bob Spot.

While he hasn't yet been named as anyone's running mate on the presidential ticket, Bob's

story of a small town regular guy who took a passion

and made it his own is now inspiring book lovers and readers all over America. Thanks for joining

me, Bob. Thank you, Dan. It's great to be here. I have to start by asking you to share your

inspiration for this bookstore Odyssey that you're on. What gave you the idea?

Well, very simply, it started with a book. And this book came out probably, I'd say about 12 years

ago. The book is called My Bookshop. And it's a book where writers celebrate their favorite places to browse, read, and shop.

And they then did an essay about this bookstore.

So there were 81 bookstores featured in the book.

And I picked up the book and I thought, well, I've heard of a few of these.

I thought, I'll just start visiting because at this time I was no longer teaching.

And so I started visiting some of the bookstores featured in there.

And then I'd have the owner sign the page and the book where they were written up.

...