The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
(Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

John Koenig. (2021). The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Simon & Schuster.

John Koenig. 2021. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Simon & Schuster.

John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Simon & Schuster, 2021.

John Koenig. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Simon & Schuster, 2021.

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   • bioText: John Koenig is a video maker, voice actor, graphic designer, and writer. Born in Idaho and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, he created The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows in 2009, first as a blog at DictionaryofObscureSorrows.com before expanding the project to YouTube. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and daughter.
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The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"It's undeniably thrilling to find words for our strangest feelings...Koenig casts light into lonely corners of human experience...An enchanting book. " —The Washington Post

A truly original book in every sense of the word, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows poetically defines emotions that we all feel but don't have the words to express—until now.
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 set out to fill the gaps in our language of emotion. 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, relatable, 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. With a gorgeous package and beautiful illustrations throughout, this is the perfect gift for creatives, word nerds, and human beings everywhere.

reviews

1. • premium: True
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     September 13, 2021
     Koenig (Charismata) brings his website of the same name to the page in this whimsical speculative dictionary of “new words for emotions.” His definitions are broken into six sections: “Between living and dreaming” introduces the word for the longing to quit one’s job for a “simple life” (trumspringa) and for being proud of a scar (scabulous), while “The interior wilderness” covers the desire to care less and relax (liberosis). In “Montage of attractions,” fensiveness is “a knee-jerk territorial reaction when a friend displays a casual interest in one of your obsessions,” and “Faces in a crowd” covers hailbound, the compulsion to wave to strangers. In “Boats against the current,” zenosyne is “the feeling that time is getting faster,” while in “Roll the bones,” elosy is the fear of big life changes. While most are straightforward definitions, some are “featured” and come in the form of essays on the feeling the term is meant to evoke. Unfortunately, Koenig sometimes slips into platitudes (in his entry for alazia, the fear that one can’t change, he writes that “even if it’s true that you’re no longer flexible enough to be anybody, you might be getting strong enough to finally be yourself”). Still, fans of the site will find this appropriately diverting. Agent: Heather Karpas, ICM Partners.

2. • premium: True
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     October 15, 2021
     Words have the power to transform and make us see the world through a different lens. YouTube host Koenig connects the seemingly unconnectable feelings we as humans experience on a daily basis and puts words to them. Through this practice he has created his own language to define each word along with the etymology that inspired it. Broken into separate chapters that focus on varying themes, each section of Koenig's dictionary contains a brief introduction followed by words and their accompanied definition. Readers will delight in words like funkenzwangsvorstellung which is defined by Koenig as "the primal trance of watching a campfire in the dark." Coming across definitions for words like candling (assessing your life on your birthday), rivener ("a chilling hint of distance that creeps slowly into a relationship"), and elosy (fear of inevitable changes), among many other expressions readers may have not heard before offer a tiny slice of our shared humanity. Koenig brilliantly finds a way to show, in his new words and their definitions, how we connect to ourselves and one another through feelings and emotions.

     COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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     March 1, 2022
     

     Despite its title, Koenig's first book is not about sadness, nor is it mostly about faulty or funny feelings, like Eden Sher's The Emotionary: A Dictionary of Words That Don't Exist for Feelings That Do. Rather, focused on longing, awareness, and evanescence, it enshrines Koenig's well-regarded blog (of the same title) of invented, repurposed, or obsolescent but redefined words forming a glossary of emotions. Expanding "the palette of language," Koenig finely dissects and names "even the faintest quirks of the human condition." Six chapters provide minimal category structures, with themes including the outer world, the inner world, others, friends, time, and meaning. Koenig offers pronunciation help and wide-ranging, semi-serious etymologies. Some coinages will produce a fond smile (plata rasa: that lulling dishwasher sound); others, wistful or anxious recognition (slipfast: the longing to slide through unnoticed). Entries are usually brief, but some expand into reflective mini-essays (morii: the wish to capture the ephemeral). A couple might elicit a wince, but most are agile, erudite, poetic, clever, even witty (aubadoir: that predawn feeling). VERDICT For philosophers, language lovers, novelists, and fantasists, this perspective-expanding little book offers abundant ambedo ("a momentary trance of emotional clarity").--Patricia D. Lothrop

     Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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shortDescription

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"It's undeniably thrilling to find words for our strangest feelings...Koenig casts light into lonely corners of human experience...An enchanting book. " —The Washington Post

A truly original book in every sense of the word, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows poetically defines emotions that we all feel but don't have the words to express—until now.
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...

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Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

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