The reviews for Face with Tears of Joy have started to come in, and I am happy (and relieved) to say that reviewers seem to be enjoying the book quite a bit! Here are a few quotes:
Houston chronicles the rise of the emoji in this fun romp through the evolution of digital language…equal parts informative and delightful.
I’ve always really enjoyed 99% Invisible, Roman Mars’ long-running podcast about design, which makes it all the more special to have appeared on three different episode in the past — on the octothorpe (#), the interrobang (‽), and pocket calculators respectively. Now, to mark the publication of Face with Tears of Joy, I’m pleased to say that I’m on it again!
Please allow me to introduce the cover of my next book, Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji!
‘😂’ will be published in July this year, and you can pre-order the paperback in the USA from Norton, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Bookshop.org, Hudson, Powell’s, or Walmart. In the rest of the world, order from Amazon.co.uk, Bookshop.org or Waterstones.
Emoji have been in the news recently for a host of reasons, most of them bad — but all of them, I would submit, worthy of our attention.
First up is a Netflix series called Adolescence that has been garnering plaudits in the UK and elsewhere since it went on air last month. I won’t spoil the plot, but I note that Emojipedia has joined the clamour with a blog post titled “Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’, Emoji Codes & Emoji Repurposing”. In it, Keith Broni explores the programme’s use of an “emoji code” by so-called incels — a misogynistic online culture of men who blame women for their lack of sexual success — in which, for instance, ‘💯’ refers to the belief that 20% of men attract 80% of women. Adolescence moots other codes too, such as ‘🔵’ and ‘🔴’ to represent the blue and red pills made famous by The Matrix, the Wachowski sisters’ dystopian action film, and which in turn relate to being “blue pilled” or “red pilled” — either accepting of mainstream views or “seeing through” them to some alleged hidden truth.
Some big news today: The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of our Time will be published soon in paperback!
The paperback edition is updated from the hardback, with all of the various errata fixed and a number of changes made to account for the book’s paperback rather than hardcover construction. If you remember, the hardback edition had a number of references to its own physical form (“Tip the book towards you and look at the spine”, and so on) which have now been modified accordingly. Of course, the paperback edition provides a new and different set of reference points, so if some passages now ask you to find a hardback on your bookshelf, others can now tell you to look again at the paperback in your hands.