This book is a very similar book to another book I reviewed recently, The Book of Human Emotions by Tiffany Watt Smith. Like that book, this is a dictionary of emotions, with entries in alphabetical order, and includes all kinds of emotions terms from the distant past to the present day, and from many different languages and cultures.
Susie Dent clearly loves words. She has a “word of the day” post on twitter with more than a million followers! In this book, she shares words that describe emotions. She also introduced me to a new term – “emodiverse” which is a name for people who draw on a wider range of vocabulary to express their emotions. Susan David would call this emotional granularity.
Dent’s book is an eclectic mix of words that she personally relates to, and those that have a surprising backstory. If you are interested in emotions and learning new words, this book is an absolute delight.
