After reading the essay The Unknown Unknown, Ian ponders what makes a bookstore great and how it can change your life.
There's always a few people each week who come into the book store with wide eyes. They look around and say “Wow! I didn't know that there were still bookstores like this! Don't people only buy books
online now?” I usually politely smile and say something I hope is a bit witty, but the truth is that I think they're magical places.
Whenever I travel to a new city, one of the first places that I try and find is a book store. Not one of those giant chain stores that seem to sell everything BUT books, I look for one of those little tiny ones, down a side street, that has piles of books stacked to the ceiling. These shops are my favourite places in the world and I could happily spend an unmeasurable amount of time in them. How fortuitous it is that I happen to work in one.
What I especially love about these stores is how within a very short amount of time after walking through the door, I find myself holding something (more often than not, many somethings) that I never knew that I needed to have. That one little book (or books) I've never heard of but caught my eye because of the beautiful cover or because I was feeling particularly one way or another. If I hadn't then maybe I would have simply walked by and never would have picked it up. With it in my hand I now feel all the secret knowledge of the universe pulsing through me that I've previously been missing in my life. Or perhaps it
just makes me laugh at the well timed fart joke. The point being is that if I had never stumbled into that book store, I would have neverfound this new glorious part of me that I now hold in my hands.
This is just one of the astounding ideas that Mark Forsyth touches on in his essay The Unknown Unknown. A tiny little book that we have sitting on our counter which I would have never known existed unless I had come into the book store and pottered around for a while until it's elegant green cover caught my eye.
Throughout his short essay, Forsyth discusses various ideas of the process of buying books (which make a nice little allegory for life) that I whole-heartedly agree with. One of these is the idea of Bibliomancy, the art of prediction via randomly opening a book and reading the first thing you see. Amazing! Another thing I didn't know that I didn't know.
But the overall nugget of knowledge that I gained from Forsyth's essay is this: you don't know what you need until you go out and find it. That “it” being anything from a new book to a new lover (which in all honesty I feel are pretty interchangeable). Where's the sense of adventure in discovering something that answers a question you already know? Why not try and find a question you never thought to ask?
In a sense, it's quite like becoming a protagonist of your own book. I mean, Alice in Wonderland wouldn't be anywhere as interesting if she hadn't stumbled down the rabbit hole. It would just be Alice playing in the garden. A place she already knows. I'm sure it was a lovely garden, but how boring!
So next time you stumble into our little book store, or any book store for that matter, don't forget to take the time to wander around. Take action! Be a protagonist! Look around at all the wonderful things that surround you! You never know what amazing little book you're going to pick up that is either going to sum up your life, change it completely, or simply make you giggle at a well timed joke about the male anatomy. Either way, you'll be better off because of it.
