The American writer John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows began life as a Tumblr blog and became a real book at the start of this year. It’s a collection of made-up words for things that ought to have their own terms but don’t. “Sonder” is in it, meaning: “The realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.”
It’s apt that Irish musician Dermot Kennedy has taken the word for the title of his second album, because he’s another of those everyman singer-songwriters whose emotional but non-specific lyrics are designed to be applied to the lives of as many listeners as possible.
