Tiny Town of Hobart, New York and it’s 5 Indie Bookstores

Wm. H. Adams Antiquarian Books
Wm. H. Adams Antiquarian Books by Flickr User: Watershed Post

Above is one of five bookstores in the very tiny town of Hobart, New York.  This town of only 400 people has five independent bookstores.  The one pictured above, Wm. H. Adams Antiquarian Books actually has a website!  The little town of Hobart with all of its .5 square miles is about an hour west of Albany, NY.

I first discovered about this little town from a post on from Atlas Obscura a great website with lots of really cool lesser known stuff.  The exact kind of thing I loved covering when I was producing History Podcast.  Atlas Obscura also has a book for you to read, how convenient.  I actually discovered the website only after I heard about the book.  It’s one of those big tomes that you read slowly and savor.  I’m reading it slowly, an article here and there and I also signed up for Altas Obscura’s daily emails with lots of cool stories like this one.

Atlas Obscura
Atlas Obscura

Man, these folks that started the bookstores in Hobart are smart:

help himself unwind, he taught himself classical Greek.

To help himself unwind.  Who does that now?  I sit down and think, man I need to relax, I’m going to binge on Stranger Things.  But those in Hobart relax by teaching themselves to read the Illiad in classical Greek!  Geez!  I  wonder how different the story comes across.  Nevermind, it will never happen at least not for me.  My Gosh!

This is Diana and Bill the founders of the store above.  It gets better though:

translated Hippocrates in his spare time

Yep, in his spare time!  Wow!  The Atlas Obscura article is a well-written piece on how the town came to have all these bookstores.  I recommend it to my readers as I myself enjoyed it very much!