The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
September 26, 2021
First off, I absolutely love this cover.
I've been a big fan of Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows for years since the Tumblr days. I found myself fascinated by the capture of an incredibly specific emotion or situation that I had felt but never quite thought about how to describe it - monachopsis has been one of my favorite words since I first saw it described years ago.
Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a project that was started by John Koenig, who decided to coin various feelings that tend to be almost universal in the human experience, but don't have words that describe these emotions. Koenig writes in the beginning that "Not so long ago, to be sad meant you were filled to the brim with some intensity of experience" and then goes on to encourage us all to "savor it while it lasts - if only because it means that you care about something in this world enough to let it under your skin." I've always enjoyed reading through the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, but during the current times, I found many of the feelings described to be particularly apt.
One of the cool things to see is how each word or phrase came to be decided upon - usually, it was a portmanteau, and seeing how each piece of the blend came to be selected to form a word that perfectly encapsulates the feeling it is trying to convey. I also liked seeing how the words are pronounced since when I tend to learn a word from a book, I often don't know how to pronounce it. These two pieces weren't found in the original online Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows project, so seeing it now for words both familiar and new was fun. The organization of this book, into sections on the outer world, the inner self, the people you know, the people you don't, the passage of time, and the search for meaning was a very thought-provoking way to organize a so-called dictionary, so that was really interesting.
I enjoyed reading the essay definitions a lot - many of them ended up being an extended metaphor, which hit very differently from some of the shorter ones when there was enough time for the reader to really explore the feeling that was associated (the Dorothy one was particularly hard-hitting for me). Many times, a lot of thought-provoking questions were raised in these metaphors, and I found myself getting lost while exploring all of these words.
Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC.
More about The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows here:
Title: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Author: John Koenig
Have you ever wondered about the lives of each person you pass on the street, realizing that everyone is the main character in their own story, each living a life as vivid and complex as your own? That feeling has a name: “sonder.” Or maybe you’ve watched a thunderstorm roll in and felt a primal hunger for disaster, hoping it would shake up your life. That’s called “lachesism.” Or you were looking through old photos and felt a pang of nostalgia for a time you’ve never actually experienced. That’s “anemoia.”
If you’ve never heard of these terms before, that’s because they didn’t exist until John Koenig began his epic quest to fill the gaps in the language of emotion. Born as a website in 2009, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows has garnered widespread critical acclaim, inspired TED talks, album titles, cocktails, and even tattoos. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows “creates beautiful new words that we need but do not yet have,” says John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars.
By turns poignant, funny, and mind-bending, the definitions include whimsical etymologies drawn from languages around the world, interspersed with otherworldly collages and lyrical essays that explore forgotten corners of the human condition—from “astrophe,” the longing to explore beyond the planet Earth, to “zenosyne,” the sense that time keeps getting faster.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is for anyone who enjoys a shift in perspective, pondering the ineffable feelings that make up our lives, which have far more in common than we think. With a gorgeous package and beautifully illustrated throughout, this is the perfect gift for creatives, word nerds, and people everywhere.