2025 Reading Challenge discussion

Hi everyone!

Time to nominate books for June! The theme is Emoji.

~Please remember to state a connection to the theme when you nominate.

~Books we have read less than three years ago are not eligble. To see which books are not eligble, see this google sheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

~ Each person can nominate 1 book.

~ Book must be available both as a physical copy and as an ebook.

~ Authors: Please do not nominate your own book.

~ Please do not nominate books that are part of a series, unless it is the first book.

~ You can second someone else's nomination, but that will count as your nomination.


This thread will be closed by April 26th, and we will choose ten books for the poll. If there are more than ten books nominated, we will choose "seconded" books first. If there is still a tie to get into the top ten, we'll go back to the Goodreads average rating to see which is highest.

I looked up the origin of the word emoji - and it seems to originate from the japanese words e (絵, 'picture') and moji (文字, 'character').
I would like to nominate Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, because I think it fits those words pretty well (and contains many beautiful sketches). Plus, while I was researching books to nominate for this prompt I also found that there actually are 'emoji-translations' of Alice in Wonderland (for example by Joe Hale). An excerpt:


"And what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alice-...

And a second one, this one by Kristina Semenova (it combines emojis and text):

I would like to nominate The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.
Various internet searches have told me that the most popular emoji is "face with tears of joy" 😂 so I have chosen a book with Joy in the title.

I nominate The Beach Escape by Rachel Magee 🥵😎🏄🏊🏻🐚🌻🌴🍹☀️🌞

Lina wrote: "I looked up the origin of the word emoji - and it seems to originate from the japanese words e (絵, 'picture') and moji (文字, 'character').
I would like to nominate [book:Alice's Adventures in Wonde..."

Wow that’s the most well researched nominations I have ever seen I think :D

Lina wrote: "I looked up the origin of the word emoji - and it seems to originate from the japanese words e (絵, 'picture') and moji (文字, 'character').
I would like to nominate [book:Alice's Adventures in Wonde..."

And also one I really want to re-read so I will second it!

I nominate American Dirt.

Donna wrote: "I nominate American Dirt."

Hi Donna, could you please state a connection with the theme Emoji?

I'd like to nominate Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, an emotional memoir.

I nominate Herman Melville's novel, Moby Dick. The relation to emojis is the novel was translated into emojis [Emoji Dick] and was the 1st emoji-translated novel accepted by the Library of Congress.

📅 World Emoji Day is an annual unofficial holiday occurring on 17 July, intended to celebrate emoji; in the years since the earliest observance, it has become a popular date to make product or other announcements and releases relating to emoji. (The first time was 17 July 2014) https://tinyurl.com/3dm4tjd8

📅 I nominate Up Close and Dangerous, which was first published July 17, 2007.

I nominate Attachments by Rainbow Rowell because the story is about a man who monitors his company's email servers and watches for employees breaking internet use rules. Two of his co-workers are using company internet to write personal notes to each other. Internet/emails/texting/emojis...all interconnected.

Closing nominations tomorrow, maybe we can get in a couple more :)

I'll go ahead and put in a nomination.

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi because the title reminds me of this emoji: 🤯 where the top of its head is shattering due to the explosion :)

Poll is up!

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/list/5...