INTRODUCTION
Every so often, I feel the need to pause and acknowledge the small places that have quietly shaped my life. Not the grand landmarks or the dramatic turning points, but the modest rooms and corners of the city where something essential happened — where I found connection, or comfort, or simply a sense of being part of the world. Book-Cycle in Exeter has been one of those places for me. As it changes, and as I change with it, I wanted to set down what it has meant.
There are places in a life that matter far more than their size suggests.
For me, Book-Cycle has been one of them.
I first began visiting during my working years, when my jobs gave me very little in the way of intellectual nourishment. I often felt starved for stimulation, and so these charity bookshops — Book-Cycle especially — became my oxygen. I would finish at work, walk through the door, and feel something inside me wake up again.
Book-Cycle is unlike any other bookshop in Exeter. It has its own ethos, its own rhythm, its own slightly eccentric charm. There are no fixed prices — you simply give what you can, or what you feel is right. For years it was cash‑only, with a limit of three books per visit, a system that sounded restrictive on paper but in practice felt strangely liberating. Recently they’ve moved with the times and now accept card payments too, but the underlying spirit remains the same: books circulating freely, passing from hand to hand, ideas moving quietly through the community like an underground current.
The layout is quirky, the atmosphere informal, and the volunteers — well, they have always been characters. Some more approachable than others, some more eccentric than others, but all part of the fabric of the place. Over the years I met undergraduates, travellers, wanderers, and people from all over the world. Conversations happened naturally, without effort. It was one of the few places in Exeter where you could still strike up a chat with a stranger and not be met with suspicion or discomfort.
For someone like me — someone who lives through books, ideas, and the gentle spark of human contact — it was a refuge.
I found books there I would never have discovered anywhere else. Some of them changed the direction of my thinking. Some simply kept me company. All of them mattered.
And now, in retirement, with my mobility more limited and no car to widen my radius, Book-Cycle has become even more important. It is one of the few places within easy reach where I can still find that flicker of connection — a bit of banter with the volunteers, a familiar face, a moment of being seen. Even in its quieter, more withdrawn state, it remains a place where I am not invisible.
Because it has changed.
The world has changed with it.
Where once there was chatter, now there is silence. Customers browse without speaking. Volunteers are more withdrawn, more tired, more cautious. The atmosphere has thinned. It reflects something larger — a cultural shift toward disengagement, a retreat into private bubbles, a quieting of public life. We are living through an age where people seem to have turned the dimmer switch down on the world.
And yet I keep going.
Partly out of habit, partly out of gratitude, but mostly because I still believe in the small, human places. I still believe in conversation, even when it is rare. I still believe in the spark of connection, even when it flickers faintly. And I still believe in books — perhaps more now than ever.
My love of books began in childhood, not through abundance but through scarcity. We had very few books at home, usually second‑hand, and we cherished what we had. My Mother taught me to read, encouraged me, praised every effort. She had been deprived of books entirely during her youth, taken to Germany as a forced labourer during the war. She once told me that if she so much as glanced at a book there, she would have been beaten.
I have never forgotten that.
Perhaps that is why I have always felt that reading is not just a pastime but a form of freedom — the freedom to think, to imagine, to wander across the world in the mind. It is a gift we take for granted, but I never have, and never will.
Now, as I begin to declutter and return some of my books to Book-Cycle, it feels right. The cycle completes itself. Others will find them, as I once did. My house, like Book-Cycle, is full of books and a bit old‑fashioned — and that suits me fine.
So I will keep cycling down the road to that little shop.
I will keep browsing the shelves.
I will keep talking to whoever is willing to talk.
And I will keep honouring the places that helped me breathe when life felt thin.
Book-Cycle may be quieter now, but it is still part of my landscape, part of my story, and part of the long thread that connects my childhood, my Mother’s history, my working years, and the person I am today.
And for that, I am grateful.
CLOSING NOTE
I don’t know what Book-Cycle will become in the years ahead. Places change, people move on, and the world seems to be withdrawing into itself. But as long as the door is open, I will keep stepping inside. Not just for the books — though they remain my lifelong companions — but for the simple act of being among others, however quietly. In a time when so much feels disconnected, these small moments of presence matter more than ever.
