SMILE It’s Your #bookbday (08/02/17)

Happy #bookbday to:

HAPPINESS: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After by Heather Harpham

“Happiness is an incredibly moving account of survival and love that will inspire readers to hold on tight to what’s truly important.”–Booklist

“In this moving memoir. . . [Harpham] describes with warmth, fearless honesty, and humor the harrowing saga of what happened after she gave birth…Harpham has written a heartfelt exploration of familial bonds and the sometimes incredibly bumpy journey one must take to get to contentment.” —Publishers Weekly

THE EMOJI CODE: The Linguistics Behind Smiley Faces and Scaredy Cats by Vyvyan Evans

Vyvyan Evans’s Emoji Code charts the evolutionary origins of language, the social and cultural factors that govern its use, change, and development; as well as what it reveals about the human mind. In most communication, nonverbal cues are our emotional expression, signal our personality, and are our attitude toward our addressee. They provide the essential means of nuance and are essential to getting our ideas across. But in digital communication, these cues are missing, which can lead to miscommunication. The explosion of emoji, in less than four years, has arisen precisely because it fulfills exactly these functions which are essential for communication but are otherwise absent in texts and emails. Evans persuasively argues that emoji add tone and an emotional voice and nuance, making us more effective communicators in the digital age.