I’ve got a new word for you: sonder.
You won’t find it in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, but you will find it in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a book that poetically defines the emotions that we all feel but don’t have the words to express… like sonder.
The idea of sonder is quite fascinating. Here’s the formal definition from Holstee:
“the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness — an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk”
I mean, think about that. How many times do we appear in the lives of others, only to never see them again? How many people have we encountered as ‘extras’ in our own lives even though we don’t even know it, like:
- the people you say ‘good morning’ to at the coffee shop?
- the microscopic-sized people you see down below as you look at your plane window?
- the irate driver who honks at you out of frustration?
- the kind soul who holds the elevator just long enough for you to slip on?
These people are intricately connected to our own lives in millions of ways and they can influence the course of our day and our lives, even though we have no idea who they are. But they matter. That’s the idea of sonder.
I’m fascinated with the concept and realized that every character I meet in the pages of a book is a perfect example of sonder: people we connect with and who impact our lives in some way, but then move on. And some books are perfect for this kind of exploration, artfully weaving connections between characters in ways that make us consider our own tangled web of relationships, too.
Here are the books mentioned in this episode. You’ll find links to my Amazon and Bookshop affiliate stores below. Thanks for your bookish support!
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths.
As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.
And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?
Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher
Elfrida Phipps, once of London’s stage, moved to the English village of Dibton in hopes of making a new life for herself. Oscar Blundell gave up his life as a musician in order to marry Gloria. Carrie returns from Australia at the end of an ill-fated affair with a married man to find her mother and aunt sharing a home and squabbling endlessly. Sam Howard is trying to pull his life back together after his wife has left him for another.
It is the strange rippling effects of a tragedy that will bring these five characters together in a large, neglected estate house near the Scottish fishing town of Creagan. It is in this house, on the shortest day of the year, that the lives of five people will come together and be forever changed.
The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
When I hug a book after I’m done reading, it means something. I hugged this book. Pooley gave us a glimpse into the real lives of seemingly unconnected people who dared to tell their truth and change their life because of it. It all starts when Julian, a very lonely elderly man makes a bold decision to tell his story on the page and then leave the notebook in a public place for others to read and share their own. The Authenticity Project notebook finds its way into the lives of Monica, Hazard, Riley, Alice and Lizzie and each add their own truth, linking them together first through the notebook and then, in their real lives. This is a beautiful story of life, loss, loneliness, love, longing and most importantly, the power of writing to change our lives.
The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.
Talking to Strangers by Malcom Gladwell
How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn’t true?
Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.
Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
This book made me work. But in a good way, of course. Strout introduces readers to thirteen different characters and their rich, unique stories, chapter by chapter. The common tie that binds them together? Olive Kitteridge, a formidable woman with a big personality. Throughout the book, we learn about each of the thirteen characters living in Olive’s town and their own secret struggles and challenges, struggles that many readers can relate to. But we also see how Olive is connected to each of them. In some cases, the connection is small and in others, it’s much larger. But as each chapter passes, we not only gain a better understanding of the townspeople themselves, but of Olive, too. These insights are touching, emotional and in some cases, hard to handle, but they are there for us to learn from all the same. I can’t wait to start the second book: Olive, Again.
Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard
Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths–that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complex, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
