Ep. 54 - Melanie Moore: A Bus Service For Book Lovers

Welcome book lovers back to our first episode of Season 3. I was away on vacation so Carrie teamed up with former guest and Ohio friend Giselle Spurgeon, to co-host this week to interview a fellow Ohioan Melanie Moore, owner of the Cincy Book Bus.

When you see an old rusty truck, the first thing that pops into your head is probably not “book store”. Melanie though had other ideas. Her dream of opening her own bookstore after retiring from 25 years of teaching was hampered somewhat by the heavy burden of all the things that go along with having a brick and mortar shop. That is, until she read a book written in 1917 called Parnassus On Wheels about a horse-drawn wagon filled with books driven around the countryside of England by a woman looking for adventure.

When Melanie looked out her kitchen window and saw her husband’s old mint green VW truck, she knew the path her bookstore future would take would have fenders and chrome. Pre-Covid, book lovers could find Melanie and her Cincy Book Bus popping up all over the greater Cincinnati area including Northern Kentucky at coffee shops, festivals, and small boutiques. Now with pandemic, she has made her presence count online as she has all kinds of ways customers can buy books, many of them hard to find European editions, both with her online store as well as with a bookclub. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention that 100% of her proceeds go to buying books for low-income youth.

Melanie talks to Carrie and Giselle about why she sees her bookstore on wheels as part of a much larger book community, how her love of the 1930s and 40s fueled the vintage feel of her logo and truck, and how she doubled the number of books she donates to worthwhile children’s organizations.

Books Discussed in This Episode:

1 - Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
2- All Creatures Great and Small series by James Herriott
3- Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
4- The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones by Daven McQueen
5- Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson
6- The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin
7- Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
8- Books by D.E. Stevenson
9- A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr