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The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the delight of not getting what you wanted
Mark Forsyth – author of the Sunday Times Number One bestseller The Etymologicon – reveals in this essay, specially commissioned for Independent Booksellers Week, the most valuable thing about a really good bookshop.
Along the way he considers the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld, naughty French photographs, why Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy would never have met online, and why only a bookshop can give you that precious thing – what you never knew you were looking for.
Along the way he considers the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld, naughty French photographs, why Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy would never have met online, and why only a bookshop can give you that precious thing – what you never knew you were looking for.
34 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 4, 2014
38 people are currently reading
1696 people want to read
About the author
Mark Forsyth
25 books902 followersMark Forsyth is a writer, journalist and blogger. Every job he’s ever had, whether as a ghost-writer or proof-reader or copy-writer, has been to do with words. He started The Inky Fool blog in 2009 and now writes a post almost every day. The blog has received worldwide attention and enjoys an average of 4,000 hits per week.
Mr. Forsyth currently resides in London.
Mr. Forsyth currently resides in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 255 reviews
July 24, 2025
FISICO E METAFISICO
È uno di quei piccoli libri che si trovano accanto alla cassa delle librerie: piccoli e di prezzo contenuto, sono l’ideale per un regalo dell’ultimo momento.
O, per ammazzare il tempo in coda.
Sono soprattutto l’ideale per quello che i francesi definiscono con molta esattezza attrape-couillon.
Io li evito come la peste, undici volte su dieci sono una fregatura.
Altrimenti non sarebbero attrape-couillons.
Ma me l’hanno regalato e quindi mi sono sentito in dovere di leggerlo. Il tempo di un pranzo e caffè (senza ammazza-caffè).
Piuttosto inutile. Meno male che pranzo e caffè son stati tutto meno che inutili.
Bene che si sostengano le buone librerie, anche se Forsyth tende a ignorare i librai, che ne sono l’anima.
Bene che si sostenga il libro cartaceo, quello fisico rispetto a quello metafisico (elettronico - gioco di parole suggerito dal traduttore editore).
E bene che si sostenga la cura editoriale, le belle copertine eccetera.
Secondo me va bene tutto, finché si legge, purché si legga.
Per il resto, a parte l’inno a internet che poi poco dopo invece critica parecchio, a parte l’orrore del condividere opinioni di un losco figuro come Donald Rumsfeld (ma sarà mica stato ironico Mr Forsyth? Nel qual caso, sarebbe intenzione che io mi son proprio perso), chi scrive il libercolino sostiene che sappiamo di sapere cose, e sappiamo di non sapere altre cose. Ma poi esistono le cose che non sappiamo di sapere.
Wow.
Sulle quali cose che non sappiamo di sapere si dilunga per una ventina di inutili paginette, senza riuscire mai a essere metafisico, alla ricerca del lazzo e frizzo più che del concetto: e se invece solo fosse salito un gradino più su, avesse guardato nel campo della filosofia, e, perché no, della religione, e avesse perlustrato l’incidenza del caso nell’esistenza, avrebbe reso l’acquisto di questa operina in qualche modo utile, invece che inutile.
Ma a me è stata regalata.
È uno di quei piccoli libri che si trovano accanto alla cassa delle librerie: piccoli e di prezzo contenuto, sono l’ideale per un regalo dell’ultimo momento.
O, per ammazzare il tempo in coda.
Sono soprattutto l’ideale per quello che i francesi definiscono con molta esattezza attrape-couillon.
Io li evito come la peste, undici volte su dieci sono una fregatura.
Altrimenti non sarebbero attrape-couillons.
Ma me l’hanno regalato e quindi mi sono sentito in dovere di leggerlo. Il tempo di un pranzo e caffè (senza ammazza-caffè).
Piuttosto inutile. Meno male che pranzo e caffè son stati tutto meno che inutili.
Bene che si sostengano le buone librerie, anche se Forsyth tende a ignorare i librai, che ne sono l’anima.
Bene che si sostenga il libro cartaceo, quello fisico rispetto a quello metafisico (elettronico - gioco di parole suggerito dal traduttore editore).
E bene che si sostenga la cura editoriale, le belle copertine eccetera.
Secondo me va bene tutto, finché si legge, purché si legga.
Per il resto, a parte l’inno a internet che poi poco dopo invece critica parecchio, a parte l’orrore del condividere opinioni di un losco figuro come Donald Rumsfeld (ma sarà mica stato ironico Mr Forsyth? Nel qual caso, sarebbe intenzione che io mi son proprio perso), chi scrive il libercolino sostiene che sappiamo di sapere cose, e sappiamo di non sapere altre cose. Ma poi esistono le cose che non sappiamo di sapere.
Wow.
Sulle quali cose che non sappiamo di sapere si dilunga per una ventina di inutili paginette, senza riuscire mai a essere metafisico, alla ricerca del lazzo e frizzo più che del concetto: e se invece solo fosse salito un gradino più su, avesse guardato nel campo della filosofia, e, perché no, della religione, e avesse perlustrato l’incidenza del caso nell’esistenza, avrebbe reso l’acquisto di questa operina in qualche modo utile, invece che inutile.
Ma a me è stata regalata.
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June 1, 2015I have to read this. It's absolutely what I specialise in. I have only a few bestsellers, but I have all sorts of goodies you wouldn't find unless you were looking for them specifically (see my bookshelves!) It's one of the joys of owning an indie bookshop that I can spend my days looking for the unusual and then when customers come in looking for something quite different (which I will order for them) they leave with books that they'd never even heard of. I can't wait to read it.
April 4, 2016
“The book is still waiting for you, the perfect book, the one that will answer every question you didn't know to ask. It's on the shelf at the top, in the corner, just within reach of your grasping hand. The unknown unknown, waiting like an undiscovered continent, just at the back of the bookshop.”
I have a premium account at a Danish online bookstore. I can buy psychical books as well as e-books at an outrageously low price and get them delivered at my front door a few days later. It is convenient, comfortable and quick. Every book I ever wanted is only one click away.
So why do I keep going into bookstores?
I love bookstores because I love surprises. I love browsing through a selection of books that I never knew existed. I love gasping at beautiful covers I've never seen before and picking up books out of sheer curiosity. I love bookstores because they always surprise me; whether it's with a beautiful edition of my favorite novel or an obscure novel that I haven't heard about before. I love bookstore because I never know which books I'll take with me, when I leave.
And that is exactly what this essay is about. I wholeheartedly agree with Mark Forsyth; surprises do not come from a Google search. Surprises occur when you enter a bookstore.
I have a premium account at a Danish online bookstore. I can buy psychical books as well as e-books at an outrageously low price and get them delivered at my front door a few days later. It is convenient, comfortable and quick. Every book I ever wanted is only one click away.
So why do I keep going into bookstores?
I love bookstores because I love surprises. I love browsing through a selection of books that I never knew existed. I love gasping at beautiful covers I've never seen before and picking up books out of sheer curiosity. I love bookstores because they always surprise me; whether it's with a beautiful edition of my favorite novel or an obscure novel that I haven't heard about before. I love bookstore because I never know which books I'll take with me, when I leave.
And that is exactly what this essay is about. I wholeheartedly agree with Mark Forsyth; surprises do not come from a Google search. Surprises occur when you enter a bookstore.
January 29, 2016
This is not really a book, just an essay, but the best 99¢ I've spent on Kindle in a while. All about the delights of going into the bookshop and finding something you never knew you wanted. For booklovers everywhere.
January 8, 2024
Er zijn dingen waarvan we weten dat we ze weten. Er zijn dingen waarvan we weten dat we ze niét weten. Maar er zijn ook dingen waarvan we niét weten dat we ze niet weten.
“Things you did not know that you did not know.”
En zo zijn er ook boeken die je niet kent van schrijvers waarvan je nog nooit gehoord hebt.
“The best books are the books you never knew you wanted until you got them… in the bookstore.”
En: “Half of the art of bookselling is about choosing what not to have in your shop. It’s not enough to have good books, you must not have bad books.”
Welkom @Bookznbooze Gent!
#bookznbooze
“Things you did not know that you did not know.”
En zo zijn er ook boeken die je niet kent van schrijvers waarvan je nog nooit gehoord hebt.
“The best books are the books you never knew you wanted until you got them… in the bookstore.”
En: “Half of the art of bookselling is about choosing what not to have in your shop. It’s not enough to have good books, you must not have bad books.”
Welkom @Bookznbooze Gent!
#bookznbooze
August 24, 2015
This was a lovely little read about my preferred way of choosing books. And he just explains it so well why we should go into bookstores picking up books we have not heard of before.
Read it and follow its example.
Read it and follow its example.
January 22, 2016
This short essay is based around a quote by Donald Rumsfeld. Whaaat?, yea, I know. Anyway, in a nutshell, you don't know what it is that you do not know! Author Mark Forsyth uses this to describe what happens when you walk into a bookshop and pick up a book you never intended to read, and yet, find that book to be exactly what you needed. Similar to how I thought of this essay.
Recommend to anyone who has found a book and that book was exactly the right thing at the right time to read.
Recommend to anyone who has found a book and that book was exactly the right thing at the right time to read.
March 14, 2021
Sono alquanto arrabbiata per il dissing a Lizzie Bennett, qui dipinta come un'arrampicatrice sociale che si mette con Darcy solo per via del suo considerevole patrimonio. Consiglierei al caro Mark una rilettura di Orgoglio e Pregiudizio, visto che fin dai primi capitoli si specifica che "Darcy possiede la metà del Derbyshire" ("la metà triste"), per cui non si può certo affermare che Lizzie cambi idea su di lui quando capisce che è oggettivamente un buon partito.
Detto questo, un libro godibile per chiunque non sia permalosetto come me, grazie a Carla del regalo ❤️
Detto questo, un libro godibile per chiunque non sia permalosetto come me, grazie a Carla del regalo ❤️
September 27, 2014
On Tuesday I was talking to someone about unknown unknowns. On Thursday, I popped into the bookshop to buy a copy of In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, and found this. I was intrigued, and when I'd paid for the Tanizaki said, "Ah, I'm thinking maybe I should have put this on the card, too." "You can have it," I was told, and I accepted it gratefully.
It's a small format, and only 23 pages. I read it today in perhaps twenty minutes, interrupted by a phone call at one point.
The most recent book I had finished, before this, was Effie Briest, by Theodor Fontane. If I had written a review of that, I was going to say that it was light, in a rococo kind of way, but extremely well observed.
However, reading this kind of thing (The Unknown Unknown), by which I mean, popular contemporary non-fiction, after a gap of unmeasured years, makes me realise that there is light and there is altogether frothy. Or, to put it another way, I think I have got into reading habits such that something as light as this piece by Mark Forsyth seems to me a Malteser rather than a meal. It seems, shall we say, gratuitously light. Example sentence:
"Testes to Tolstoy, that's what I say; and I say it in full knowledge of his vast reputation and beard."
As I said, gratuitously light.
And yet, I am forced to deduce that it is this fart-soufflé style of prose that one must cultivate if one is to engage the general reading public.
Or to deduce that it is widely supposed among writers and publishers that it is this fart-soufflé style, etc.
One of the two.
However, I think the central point of the book, that a good bookshop allows you to make serendipitous discoveries that are vastly harder to make online, is both sound and valuable, and, since it only takes about twenty minutes to read, I can't really complain.
I might be sending this book on to someone in the post. It's that kind of book, I suppose.
It's a small format, and only 23 pages. I read it today in perhaps twenty minutes, interrupted by a phone call at one point.
The most recent book I had finished, before this, was Effie Briest, by Theodor Fontane. If I had written a review of that, I was going to say that it was light, in a rococo kind of way, but extremely well observed.
However, reading this kind of thing (The Unknown Unknown), by which I mean, popular contemporary non-fiction, after a gap of unmeasured years, makes me realise that there is light and there is altogether frothy. Or, to put it another way, I think I have got into reading habits such that something as light as this piece by Mark Forsyth seems to me a Malteser rather than a meal. It seems, shall we say, gratuitously light. Example sentence:
"Testes to Tolstoy, that's what I say; and I say it in full knowledge of his vast reputation and beard."
As I said, gratuitously light.
And yet, I am forced to deduce that it is this fart-soufflé style of prose that one must cultivate if one is to engage the general reading public.
Or to deduce that it is widely supposed among writers and publishers that it is this fart-soufflé style, etc.
One of the two.
However, I think the central point of the book, that a good bookshop allows you to make serendipitous discoveries that are vastly harder to make online, is both sound and valuable, and, since it only takes about twenty minutes to read, I can't really complain.
I might be sending this book on to someone in the post. It's that kind of book, I suppose.
September 11, 2017
Forsyth's argument is unbelievably weak. He argues that the internet disallows us from finding "the unknown unknown". In other words, according to Mr. Forsyth, the internet prevents us from finding books or authors we haven't heard about. All that the internet allows for, he says, is to locate works we already know about. Doesn't this argument sound preposterous to you? I've found thousands of titles through Goodreads, online bookstores, and local libraries. Unquestionably it's wonderful to browse through a bookstore now and then, but the fact is that I now find the majority of books I read by searching online. It's phenomenal to me that this crap was even published!
November 13, 2014
A short pamphlet on the value of independent bookstores.
"Along the way he considers the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld, naughty French photographs, why Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy would never have met online, and why only a bookshop can give you that precious thing – what you never knew you were looking for."
"Along the way he considers the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld, naughty French photographs, why Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy would never have met online, and why only a bookshop can give you that precious thing – what you never knew you were looking for."
July 2, 2014
A very amusing and well written essay on why we need bookshops. I agree with it all!
September 4, 2021
Esej o tom, že najlepšie knihy sú tie, o ktorých ešte nevieme, že existujú :)
March 15, 2020
"It is a room (or two) where the unknown unknowns of the world are laid out on tables and stacked in shelves. It is a room (or two) where you can find what you never knew you wanted, where your desires can be perpetually expanded."
September 12, 2017
It's bad enough that this book takes as titular inspiration the empty evasive bandying of abstractions performed by Donald Rumsfeld during his disastrous stint in the GW Bush administration. ("There are known knowns, there are known unknowns, and there are unknown unknowns.") Mark Forsyth then uses this dubious slogan to exhort the necessity of "bookstores" over "the internet".
According to Forsyth, "If you know you want something, the internet can get it for you," but "the unknown unknown must be found otherwhere." What nonsense! And in case we didn't get it the first time, he repeats himself not very much later: "So the internet means that, though you get what you already knew you wanted, you’ll never get anything more."
"I don’t know why I picked up a Philip K. Dick novel one day. The only explanation is that it was out on a table in a bookshop." And I suppose we are to believe that this is the only way one will ever "pick up" a Philip K. Dick book? Apparently so, if you are Mark Forsyth.
Look, I get it; this 23-page essay was specially commissioned for Independent Booksellers Week. So Forsyth needs to sing the praises of independent booksellers. But really, the problems in Forsyth's "argument" are almost too obvious to mention. First of all, everything he says about "bookstores" is also true of "libraries". We can go and browse through libraries and find things we weren't looking for to begin with. We'd like to sing the praises of libraries too, but Forsyth doesn't mention them in this essay because it would undermine his silly argument. And just as I can browse through my physical library, I can also browse through virtual libraries such as Open Library, or Overdrive. For that matter, book collections at "internet" places like AbeBooks, Goodreads, Barnes&Noble, and, yes, the "A" word, can also be browsed through, and one can encounter lots of "unknown unknowns" in these places.
Independent bookstores: I dearly love them myself, and I support them by visiting them and buying books from them whenever I can. I have genuinely grieved to see so many of my favorite independent bookstores close, one after the other, over the years. Doubtless Mark Forsyth feels similarly. But that doesn't excuse this — I'll say it again — essay premised on utter nonsense, and it actually does independent booksellers a disservice, by lamely proclaiming a "special advantage" of bookshops that they do not really have.
According to Forsyth, "If you know you want something, the internet can get it for you," but "the unknown unknown must be found otherwhere." What nonsense! And in case we didn't get it the first time, he repeats himself not very much later: "So the internet means that, though you get what you already knew you wanted, you’ll never get anything more."
"I don’t know why I picked up a Philip K. Dick novel one day. The only explanation is that it was out on a table in a bookshop." And I suppose we are to believe that this is the only way one will ever "pick up" a Philip K. Dick book? Apparently so, if you are Mark Forsyth.
Look, I get it; this 23-page essay was specially commissioned for Independent Booksellers Week. So Forsyth needs to sing the praises of independent booksellers. But really, the problems in Forsyth's "argument" are almost too obvious to mention. First of all, everything he says about "bookstores" is also true of "libraries". We can go and browse through libraries and find things we weren't looking for to begin with. We'd like to sing the praises of libraries too, but Forsyth doesn't mention them in this essay because it would undermine his silly argument. And just as I can browse through my physical library, I can also browse through virtual libraries such as Open Library, or Overdrive. For that matter, book collections at "internet" places like AbeBooks, Goodreads, Barnes&Noble, and, yes, the "A" word, can also be browsed through, and one can encounter lots of "unknown unknowns" in these places.
Independent bookstores: I dearly love them myself, and I support them by visiting them and buying books from them whenever I can. I have genuinely grieved to see so many of my favorite independent bookstores close, one after the other, over the years. Doubtless Mark Forsyth feels similarly. But that doesn't excuse this — I'll say it again — essay premised on utter nonsense, and it actually does independent booksellers a disservice, by lamely proclaiming a "special advantage" of bookshops that they do not really have.
February 25, 2016
The title, a good one, is almost as long as the book itself! It was one of my Christmas stocking fillers and is 23 pages of sheer delight. It summed up beautifully for me the joys of rummaging in bookshops, something I've always been addicted to doing, and acquiring books, many of which I hadn't intended to buy.
A kindred spirit here..that's comforting.
A kindred spirit here..that's comforting.
October 8, 2020
Esej o dôležitosti kamenných kníhkupectiev. #trebacitat
April 7, 2017
A short, humorous look at why the loss of bookshops is a real loss. Serendipity (I've always proclaimed) is a lot less likely browsing an internet bookstore. I've found it a lot harder to discover those books that I didn't know I didn't know. Is that why Amazon is opening bookstores? While for many reasons I've turned to digital books (having too many physical books in an apartment being the main one), I do miss bookstores.
February 24, 2019
'Of all the bookshops, in all the towns, in all the world, you accidentally walked into this one, and accidentally fell in love with this particular book.' Such is this book to me. You are my unknown unknown, the one tiny book that I fell in love with when i bumped into this one random bookstore, not knowing that you would give so much delights to me :)
March 19, 2022
En este pequeño y divertido ensayo, se nos invita a reflexionar en torno a la capacidad de descubrir, de imaginar y de aprender de lo que quizás, nunca pensamos hacerlo. En 9 cortos ensayos que reflejan la incidencia que puede tener en nuestras vidas las librerías: esos lugares que son capaces de deslumbrarnos antes lecturas que nunca estuvieron en nuestra mira o que nunca estuvieron ni siquiera en nuestro conocimiento más rudimentario. Mark Forsyth nos invita a imaginar, a entregarnos en la búsqueda que es mucho más lo que desconocemos, que las pocas certezas que creemos tener. Una lectura veloz, pero que abre un abanico infinito de posibilidades.
February 20, 2025
A nice little essay with some poignant quotes, but it didn’t quite go as deep as I wanted. It makes its points quickly and clearly, but it doesn’t linger, doesn’t let the reader mull over things for long. Still, insightful and interesting overall.
“My point, and the whole point of this essay, is that it’s not enough to get what you already know you wanted. The best things are the things you never knew you wanted until you got them.”
“My point, and the whole point of this essay, is that it’s not enough to get what you already know you wanted. The best things are the things you never knew you wanted until you got them.”
April 9, 2021
Short essay on finding and falling in love with books that you hadn't previously known about. The author is known for his "word" books... and cleverness and wit. He wrote the wonderful book "The Etymologicon", and this essay is chipped from that same clever block. I also got a few good book recommendations from it.
September 8, 2021
Inaspettato, uno dei libri migliori letti quest’anno.
September 7, 2022
ecco il motivo per cui io leggo; mi sento grata
January 16, 2023
Cute! Let's romantisize our lives people!
February 8, 2023
(Tout) petit livre amusant, qui invite à se laisser emporter par le plaisir de la découverte et à découvrir de nouveaux horizons. L'humour est omniprésent et à la fin de ma lecture, j'ai eu envie d'aller flâner en librairie et de me laisser porter par l'inconnu...
April 13, 2023
Es perogrullesco, sí. Pero, citando a un profesor de historia que tuve en la universidad, “Las obviedades, a veces, hay que explicitarlas”.
April 28, 2019
A well-spent 2 euro's.
March 16, 2017
Its hard to argue. It is true - we don't know what we don't know, and that (at the risk of sounding as cryptic as Donald Rumsfield), it is in what we don't know we don't know that the wonder lies. Forsyth's little essay in a handy palm-sized book justifying why we should embrace the unknown unknown is a little paradoxical seeing that it will leave us knowing what to expect from the unknown unknown.
Then again, anyone who has experienced an unknown unknown revealing itself will know that all it takes is a split-second decision to wander in life. For instance, I hardly ever go to a second-hand bookshops in Malaysia now because it always seem like they stock only what they know they can sell. But when I was in Australia, I would make weekend trips to second-hand bookstores in the many little suburbs around Canberra. I never knew what I would find on the shelf because Canberra has universities, young families, a diverse and international community and a quiet history. Granted, most of the books I purchased then had always steered towards nonfiction (I could never convince myself to buy a book I wouldn't be arsed shipping back to my home country as I was already cutting out on lunches to buy books). I did however buy a very rare book on the history of my hometown, and I found my then unrealised obsession with Krishnamurti.
Put simply, browsing those bookstores is like unexpectedly walking through the coffee bean aisle at the supermarket and having each brand call out to you - and you take in a deep breath, knowing that you might be taking in the same air of that patron walking right in front of you. And then you happen to buy a few coffee beans. I don't even own a coffee machine.
Then again, anyone who has experienced an unknown unknown revealing itself will know that all it takes is a split-second decision to wander in life. For instance, I hardly ever go to a second-hand bookshops in Malaysia now because it always seem like they stock only what they know they can sell. But when I was in Australia, I would make weekend trips to second-hand bookstores in the many little suburbs around Canberra. I never knew what I would find on the shelf because Canberra has universities, young families, a diverse and international community and a quiet history. Granted, most of the books I purchased then had always steered towards nonfiction (I could never convince myself to buy a book I wouldn't be arsed shipping back to my home country as I was already cutting out on lunches to buy books). I did however buy a very rare book on the history of my hometown, and I found my then unrealised obsession with Krishnamurti.
Put simply, browsing those bookstores is like unexpectedly walking through the coffee bean aisle at the supermarket and having each brand call out to you - and you take in a deep breath, knowing that you might be taking in the same air of that patron walking right in front of you. And then you happen to buy a few coffee beans. I don't even own a coffee machine.
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