Perfect timing

Earlier this year we took a holiday to the south west of England. We travelled by train, stopping at three different destinations for a few days each. I've become a big fan of travelling by train, around both Britain and Europe. It's significantly less tiring than driving, less stressful than airport security, more environmentally friendly than either of those options and frees up lots of time to enjoy the view or – my personal favourite – read.

The joy of train travel means the only weight limit is what you can carry, which means that by the time we arrived at our third and final stop I knew exactly how much room I had in my suitcase for more books. Sadly the answer was one. Fortunately, Exeter's independent bookshop ensured my purchase was a good one.

We visited Bookbag towards the end of a hot Saturday afternoon (so a standard day in 2026). Tired after a later night than anticipated in a micropub combined with a faster morning than anticipated at parkrun, we got a little lost as we walked around Exeter city centre before eventually focusing our attention to find McCoy's Arcade.

[Much to my horror, I arrived home to discover I'd only taken a photo of the front of the arcade, not the bookshop itself. So while looking at this please imagine a series of big windows inside an arcade giving a view into a smart bookshop]

Bookbag is hidden away down this small, cool, shopping arcade a very short walk from the main shopping area. The whole arcade is interesting and I found myself wishing it was busier and hoping all the businesses achieve the footfall they deserve, while also accepting that most sane people would've left the hot shopping area some time earlier.

The benefit of our bad timing was that we got the bookshop mostly to ourselves. I politely swapped places around the recommendations table with two young women, while The Boy enjoyed exploring the non-fiction. It's a smallish bookshop that's long and narrow so this worked well for all of us, giving me the space to browse the recommendations table that almost filled the width of the shop while also enjoying other people's enjoyment of the books. Admit it, we all love listening into book conversations, and if it's in a bookshop the only proper thing to do is take note and see if any of the titles mentioned catch your fancy.

I really liked the mix of titles on offer, with classics interspersed between best sellers to give maximum variety to browsers. I was also taken by the nature section. Where space is limited, independent bookshops have to choose stock carefully and I felt this area of the non-fiction particularly stood out.

When it came to my purchase, there were a few recently published books that caught my eye, but as regular readers will know I'm a fan of science fiction, and one of my weaknesses is older sci fi, particularly from the 1950s. Sure the language is dated and society was rather limited for women (the books are very much of their day), but there's something about books from that period (science fiction or otherwise) that feels like a cosy, reassuring blanket. Even when the subject matter is a large black cloud that's about to separate the Earth from the Sun, plunging us all into freezing temperatures (a thought that's actually a little appealing as I type this on a swelteringly hot day).

Which all leads me on to saying I was very pleased to find a new-to-me author in the form of Fred Hoyle and his 1957 book The Black Cloud. The Boy very gently gave me a history lesson about the famous scientist when we left the shop. I don't review books, but while I'm on the subject it was a mostly very well-written and thoroughly enjoyable read. If you like dystopian fiction that's a little uplifting (not a spoiler) and combines occasional real maths and science (the parts I struggled with but was glad they were there), I definitely recommend giving this a go.

I digress but hopefully you'll forgive me when I tell you my chatter with the bookseller also mostly revolved around my purchase and how the book had only just arrived in the bookshop following a recent recommendation to her. It made my choice all the more satisfying to know I'd have missed the book if we'd been more organised and visited the day before. Sometimes timing – of publication and of visit – is everything.

Bookbag
7-10 McCoy's Arcade, Fore Street, Exeter, EX4 3AN

The little pause during a long journey

This blog took a bit of a hiatus for a few years, my visits to bookshops did not. So now I'm here to tell you about a bookshop visit from June 2024 (during Independent Bookshop Week). Time has passed, but research tells me my experience is largely still relevant today. In we go...

Most of the bookshops on this blog appear because I've planned for them. I've heard a name, had a recommendation, or perhaps had an idea I want to visit an area so I'll look up all the nearby bookshops and choose my destination for maximum bookshop visiting opportunity. Other times I'll be planning a break on a journey, looking for a moment of calm and to avoid dreaded service stations.

Then there are the occasions when we're on a long journey and I decide enough is enough and stop at the first village I can find after turning off the motorway. In this case that village was Cookham, slightly north of Maidenhead, and we were on our way home to Kent after a short break in Cheltenham, which we'd somehow ended up at after a holiday in Bakewell. I can't remember the details of how we got to be zigzagging across the country, what I can remember is my delight at realising my bookshop homing instinct had kicked in and brought us to an appropriately served village.

I can still see us in the car as we made our way into Cookham. As we turned onto the High Street, The Boy got all excitable because he'd spotted an art gallery dedicated to one of his favourite artists, then a few moments later I spotted the bookshop, and all thought of lunch went out the window as we crawled along the road in search of a parking space.

The Boy rushed back to check the opening hours of the Stanley Spencer Gallery while I made my way into The little bookshop. He soon returned, satisfied we had time to visit both and eat lunch somewhere, and so our bookshop exploring began.

First off, it really is a little bookshop. The pale blue front door opens into a space that could easily have been a cosy living room, with a white ceiling interspersed with large black beams. The small space still felt light and airy thanks to the front window and carefully placed spotlights, so there was no danger of feeling claustrophobic. 

As you'd expect, I was immediately drawn to the wall of fiction to one side just through the door. I was so busy enjoying it I appear to have forgotten to take a photo, so instead here's the other side of the room, showing some of the recommendations tables and the children's books.

After a short while, I turned around to discover The Boy was nowhere to be seen, which at first glance is an impressive achievement in a little bookshop. Then I realised he'd headed upstairs to the non-fiction area, where he'd made himself comfortable in one of the chairs.

Both of the bookshop's two rooms are nicely appointed and very nicely stocked. Had there not been a nearby gallery to go to, I reckon The Boy could've happily sat there all afternoon – instead he did the right thing and bought the book in his hands. It was Fancy Bear Goes Phishing by Scott J Shapiro, and he tells me it was an excellent read.

Meanwhile I'd enjoyed loitering at the fiction. I remember a particular shelf of books was at the perfect height for me to browse, making it both easier to see titles I was interested in and harder to choose just the one book for my purchase. Eventually I selected Violeta by Isabel Allende, an author I'd read a lot in my 20s then somehow drifted away from as the years passed.

Books bought, we headed off to the gallery for an enjoyable look around, before finally remembering the reason for our visit: lunch.

Delightful diversions such as this are what make long, dull journeys easier to bear. These days we try to travel more by train, but next time we find ourselves driving near Cookham – and I'm sure there'll be one – we will definitely pausing for books, art and a bite to eat.

The little bookshop
16 High Street, Cookham, Berkshire, SL6 9SJ