The Circle

Very much not the book I was expecting – and that's probably good. I was expecting a kind of techno thriller along the lines of a bunch of other books (did anyone ever read Format C? I loved that book when I was a kid ). What it turns out to be is a satire. And it provoked much more thought in that way, I think. The thoughts it addresses are far from new but the way in which they're presented had me defending myself and my own worldview in the context of the implicit criticism.

It's still a bit shallow and oddly paced, but I enjoyed it and I'd probably recommend it.

Before I began this book, I was already grappling with the effect that mass communication technology has had on what it means to be a person.

Starting with cell phones, the communication expectations of most humans fundamentally changed. Most people are assumed to be “always available”. This means that if you are texted or called, it is expected that you will answer your phone or quickly respond to a message.

Social media intensified these expectations, with the creation of a permanent avatar that was some reflection of yourself that could be accessed by anyone in your network at any time.

For someone socially detached such as myself, these expectations are a nightmare.

This book takes the nightmare to its logical and awful conclusion.

How much privacy and identity will be lost as social media and Ultra powerful corporations - Google, Apple - control or have access to every data point on you and every aspect of your personality? Could we cease being individuals altogether and simply blend into a collective community?

In this book, Eggers guessed at just how much will be lost and lead me down an engaging tunnel of madness on the way there. I was actually afraid to read Book III, and had to take a deep breath before I did, a rare emotional reaction for me.

This is a great, scary book. I'm not going to go live in the woods, but I will at least continue to be cognizant of the changes that new media and communication enact on my existence.

An interesting interpretation of society under synthetic and systematic person valuation. Nicely portrays some idiomatic ways of being social that relate to nowadays.

The Circle is heavy handed in its message about the dangers of allowing a private technology company remarkably like Google too much access to customers' private information and too much influence over social and political life. Its main character, Mae, a recent college graduate who is thrilled to land a job at The Circle in the beginning of the novel, transforms from new employee who takes solitary kayak trips to relieve stress and feels outraged when her privacy is invaded, to an always-on-camera company spokesperson who mercilessly hounds a former boyfriend who has rejected social media.

Mae's transformation doesn't come with any psychological underpinning, though. We see her acquiescing to her bosses' assertions that if we're being watched, we won't do bad things, and that sharing our activities is an act of generosity to others, but we don't understand why she allows herself to be convinced and why she becomes such a true believer.

In spite of the un-subtle message, and the thinness of Mae's character, this novel made me feel queasy about posting on social media and using Google for search, email, creating documents and storing photos. I'm liable to feel queasy about it from time to time anyway, but this book reminded me that technology companies like Google are profiting from my freely providing them with data about myself.

In my opinion, this book is not so much a ‘story' as it is a depiction of a dystopian world that we are all too close to becoming. I believe the author wished to exaggerate the trends in the hope that people will turn from this horrible vision. I've given this book a good rating because I see these trends, and hope that readers of this book will fight to regain some of our privacy. (How ironic is it that I'm posting on a social network, applauding a book that decries social networking?)

Before I consider crushing all my computing devices and hiding in a forest somewhere, I'd like to turn away from the political statement of the book, to discuss a couple things that struck me as weaknesses in the story. The main character, Mae, is a caricature. How can the reader be expected to believe her casual attitude toward sex with complete strangers? What sort of mental illness would cause her to willingly give up her entire identity to devote every waking hour to the company? Sorry if this offends anyone, but this character strikes me as a ‘bimbo' - easily swayed by the charisma of the cult leader to the point where she just can't think for herself.

The author also brings in an almost irrelevant story line about some deep sea creatures. They are probably only in the story so that he can say that the company is like the shark - consuming everything in its path. I was distracted from the story, wondering how these creatures who were accustomed to tremendous water pressure could survive in what was described as an unpressurised tank.

This was one of those annoyingly transparent books that offers a clear warning to readers but isn't subtle about it at all. It's not entirely bad, of course, just not always the most entertaining to read when you can see what's coming a mile away. Also couldn't stop rolling my eyes at the blatant shark symbolism throughout the second book. Seriously? It felt almost insultingly condescending, as if the author felt we'd be too stupid to pick up on that on our own. On the whole, it was a good story and is definitely pertinent to the present and future of society. We do have to be concerned about privacy and exactly what information we share with the world. This book, however obviously and patronizingly, asks the question of how much is too much? Clearly, this is meant to be a cautionary tale that provides us with clear evidence as to why we still need our privacy. I completely agree and understand, I just found myself annoyed with the author's method of conveying these ideas. No need to be so obvious and blunt about the underlying messages of your text. Most of us can pick it up on our own and don't need it shoved down our throats.

A modern 1984, nothing less I'd say. If you're sometimes scared by Facebook or Google, try to picture even bigger, beyond your wildest nightmares and you've got the Circle. It reminded me a bit of Black Mirror in the ways it sees humanity, and can hardly be proven wrong. A must read and soon to be classic I think

I did not enjoy this book.

The end is nigh, and our tech will bring it. In the same vein as Feed (sooooooo good) and The Machine Stops (the ur-tech dystopia). You should probably just bite the bullet and delete your Facebook account already.

This book was showing what could happen to us when everything is totally controlled. When I started reading, I thought, it was an imagination which seems to be far away. But in the process of reading this book, it seemed like today. Like today in a couple of years, like what happens if everything is known, everybody is watched.
I really liked this book, it wasn't very hard to read, it was very well written, with everything a good book needs, making the reader to laugh as well as to cry and the most importantst: To think.
This was really a book to think about and I really liked that.

Some interesting prose that made me think, but very unsubtle. Quick read in the first half – ‘unputdownable' as a review on the cover says – but got boring about 3/4 of the way in and picked up again in the last quarter.

While much of this book is extremely on-the-nose (the aquarium scene near the very end comes to mind) I still really enjoyed it.

I found it interesting that even though The Circle is certainly a Brave New World style dystopian entity that often oversteps its idealism into obviously creepy and invasive areas, the arguments they make for their actions are pretty darn compelling. I found myself wanting to hear more of what the “Wise Men” had to say about the world. Maybe I just like the way Eggers writes. Even the early parts of the book that are just setting up the world I found very interesting just because of the way he describes it.

Though yes, there are lots of problems. Mae feels like a plot device masquerading as a character. She does whatever is needed to serve the direction the story/The Circle is going in, with no real consistency to her. I found most of other characters to be pretty well fleshed out though (okay maybe not Kalden).

I still found this an enjoyable page-turner and I'm glad I read it.

The Circle by Dave Eggers is, as feared, a predictable YA style book that is a poor ‘modern' adaptation of Orwells 1984 that ads nothing new or particularly interesting.

The premise was good, but the characters and story fell flat.

I expected more from this book. The ideas are interesting and if you think about what services Facebook and Google are doing, such things could happen. But the execution is flawed. The last part of the book is a surprise, in a ‘huh that's it?' sense. Unsatisfying.

I couldn't decide whether to give this four stars or five. When it comes to the writing, it definitely deserves five stars. This was a fascinating book.

I'm deducting points because the main character, Mae, is an idiot.

I'm hoping to write a review of this book on my blog next week. I'll update when/if that happens.

EDIT: I've posted a review on my blog! Check it out! http://allieseverydayadventures.blogspot.com/2014/06/book-report-circle_16.html

This book is similar to an Ayn Rand novel in that the philosophy is the most important aspect of the story. It makes for one dimensional characters that are highly predictable and a story line that is relatively linear. Still, I'm giving it four stars because once you've accepted the fact that you're not going to get a great story in the traditional sense, It's easy to appreciate that the case Eggers is making against ubiquitous technological connectedness is quite compelling.

I would not recommend that anyone hire Dave Eggers as a futurist, or even a present-ist.

The key to good speculative fiction is sustaining an understanding of how humans behave - otherwise it is too far removed from the human experience that it is boring. Dave Eggers fails to do so; in particular, he seems not to know how real life people use the Internet or relate to each other in general. Or if he does, he asks far too much of us in terms of suspending our disbelief. In the first 20 pages, he asks us to believe that society has done away with online trolls and anonymity. Over the course of the next 400, we are to believe that no one (except for two characters, maybe) has ever studied or achieved any level of understanding of sociology, law, political science, or history. Somewhere along the way, the Constitution and rule of law have mysteriously poofed out of existence. It's just too absurd to take seriously. To be fair: it takes until about page 400 for Godwin's law to manifest itself.

Also, I am highly skeptical of his representations about marine ecology but I am less qualified to rant about that.

I can't even get into the gender dynamics.

Not to mention that the speculative technology is not even novel! It's like, 2005 telegraphed and wants its cutting edge technology back, Mr. Eggers.

I wouldn't be so outraged about this book except that I suspect that the people who are currently, in real life, throwing bricks and vomiting on the tech worker commuter buses in the Bay Area seem to have read this book as if it were unadorned fact.

And it is not even well-written. An example I could not resist taking note of: “There were old printers, fax machines, telex devices, letterpresses. The décor, of course, was for show. All the retro machines were nonfunctional.” Wait, Dave, I still don't get it. Can you hit me over the head about it one more time?

It's weird, because I remember his first two books as being really well-written. So, in sum, I like his older stuff better.

Is this supposed to be 21st century literature? I thought it was drivel. The world Eggers creates is too close to our own to avoid judgement, so I found myself yelling back at the audiobook and telling Mae to grow a brainstem, preferably attached to a spine. Why, oh why, can non one think for themselves in this novel? Does Eggers have such a low opinion of humanity that he paints us as one-dimensional and solely “progress” driven? I can't believe this book would receive much acclaim if written by a lesser known author.

Probably my least favorite Eggers. Total pulp.

Interesting, but mostly flat

“It doesn't work that way!” Technology, business, biology, society. The Circle was sloppy. Eggers was going for creepy; due to haste or carelessness he ended up with farce. It just doesn't work.

The business model doesn't work. The vapid protagonist, part Mary Sue and part Candide, never actually does anything: events simply happen to her and she docilely keeps the plot moving. The Marianas Trench metaphor is just plain embarrassing: a transparent shark that eats ravenously, digests and shits in minutes/seconds, and can somehow survive unaffected at surface-level pressure. I mean really cringeworthy. I feel sorry for his editors: they must've tried really hard to talk him out of that.

I dunno. It just feels like Eggers is that angry uncle who won't stop talking about [insert topic here]. Yeah, it's an important subject that merits careful attention (online privacy, that is) but semicoherent rants help nobody.

Good, but not brilliant.

In my opinion, this book has two layers. The characters remain rather flat, I've seen some more comments on that. But the underlying movement the book describes, the gradual decline of privacy and personal space, gives me the creeps. In this, the author captures the current developments very well.

So 5 stars for the story, and 1 star deducted for the characters.

The book really tries to be a 1984 for the Facebook/Google world, but somehow it is a little too much a retelling of it.

With a lack of subtlety that would make Ayn Rand proud, this book never ceases to pound home it's theme of lack of privacy as a result of technology.

The characters are all completely unlikeable and even the ones who are supposed to represent the “normal” people behave as if they have some kind of brain damage.

It was a real trial working through the repetitive dialogue that goes on for pages after the reader has gotten the point.