Annie (Circle of Friends Book 1)

It would lead to a more moral way of life. Who would do something unethical or immoral or illegal if they were being watched? This has been the way for decades now. We were provided with a great instrument in the everlasting search for knowledge.

The Circle

Everything is there for us to grasp. By pushing a button, a key in the keyboard, by touching a screen, knowledge that would " By pushing a button, a key in the keyboard, by touching a screen, knowledge that would fill millions of pages lies before our fingers and eyes. We use it for entertainment. Films, TV series, books, photos, games We use it to establish, sustain and, perhaps, reheat relationships. That beloved friend from school is found via Facebook and a friendship of the past is rekindled. Our other half travels to the USA, to Russia, to China and we can still see him and talk to him because Skype is there for us and suddenly, the distance becomes less painful.

True personal story… Online dating, dubious and dangerous as it is, provides a solution for a large number of lonely hearts. The police forces worldwide can prevent crime or so they claim We constantly let glimpses of ourselves be shown to people far and wide. We share our lives and others allow us to have a glimpse of their own. But we do it out of our own free will, we are responsible and ought to be aware of the traps that are spread in the vastness of the Web.

So what happens when we're watched against our choice? Or eerily enough, when we are brainwashed to accept this as a virtue, a holy obligation, a twisted notion of belonging, of service to the welfare of the global community? What happens when everyone's lives become transparent and everyone can interfere to a citizen's life and choices in the four corners of the world?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Circle, the Orwellian future that isn't so distant anymore She is required to reply to people's questions in an efficient but personal manner. She's constantly evaluated and watched by fellow workers and by supervisors alike. Soon, she finds out that her participation in social media is mandatory.

She HAS to post photos, comments. Nothing should remain hidden, because this is a service to the global community. Mae falls victim to brainwashing and succumbs. The thought that she plays a significant role to the alteration of the world is firmly rooted in her brain. And from then on, an avalanche follows One of those things that are truly our own is medical record. In Mae's world though, there is no such thing. Every health issue, past and present, must be known. In this nightmare, pain becomes a spectacle, discrimination over health condition is tangible.

For the Circle, privacy means lies. It signifies that you have a tendency for isolation and depression. It means that you have the potential to become a criminal. And society must persuade you to join in by every means possible. You're not allowed to keep secrets, you need to become everyone's friend whether you like it or not.

As you can see, this novel is terrifying. It offers so much to think on in relation to our present and future societies. I admit I felt uncomfortable while reading it, noticing that much of what it describes can be traced in our daily lives.

1. Tobys Room.
2. .
3. .
4. The questions of choice and morals in The Spoils of Poynton!
5. The True Story of Santa Claus.
6. .

First of all, Eggers knows how to create anticipation. From the very start, despite the happy, humane, welcoming atmosphere, you can feel that something's amiss. The mellow voices of Mae's supervisors cannot hide the patronizing tone, the smooth way in which they offer threats covered with honey to attract the naive victim. There are obviously traces of Orwell's in the story. The creation of new words TruYu, SeeChange , Eamon's political references, the tiny cameras located everywhere, the workers that cheer and clap in unison as if hypnotized.

Having said that, I feel that this was the major disadvantage of the book. I think that Eggers tried too hard to create a version for the new millennium so the effort was too obvious and the result of lower quality since it cannot be compared to Orwell's masterpiece. The similarities seemed forced because after all, Eggers may be a talented author but Orwell he is not.

The writing itself is quite good, but the dialogue is a really weak point. In my opinion, the language used by the Circle members is almost soulless, cold. Perhaps in the particular environment it is to be expected, but there were conversations between Mae and her parents or her friends that were cringe worthy. The second half of the book quickly becomes redundant, repetitive. The chapters towards the end, however, are harrowing. The mob's lust for blood, Mae's naivety that turns into malice create a kind of darkness worthy of a true dystopian universe.

The characters won't be up for any awards. Mae receives a lot of hatred and at first, I was thinking that she may be naive and frustrating but perhaps we judge her too harshly. We all want to satisfy our employers, especially in a new job and whoever claims the opposite is a big liar. At least, she seems kind and caring. These were my initial thoughts. But during the second half of the story, her behavior reached a whole new level of stupidity. I just couldn't stomach how blind and dumb she was. Frankly, it seemed implausible. Her parents, Mercer, Frances and Kalden were equally flat and annoying.

Anne had some potential but for me, the most fascinating character was Bailey. He almost persuaded me, you know That is how you create an effective villain. How we are brainwashed to think that a number of "frowns" and "smiles" would influence the actions of a democratically elected government, not to mention a regime It's what I call and it may sound too harsh and cynical "The Keyboard Rebels". So this would be a 4-star read, but the similarity to made it less original and influential, in my opinion. And naturally, the writing -although mostly satisfying- lacked power and magnetism.

However, I urge you to read it and think. Think where our world is heading. Think why it seems as if we're all aboard a train that moves in an incredible speed without brakes Sep 19, Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing Shelves: The movie opens April 28th- in my area - with Tom Hanks. Regardless - what people rated this book star or 5 star. It makes for an engaging discussion. Steve Job's last creative design before he died. I loved this Update: I still recommend it. Its a fabulous Satire with a cautionary tale! In the Jewish Religion -- Education is important.

We are taught, "Learn in order to teach". In "The Circle" --their was a line which made me think about traditional religion: And all knowledge must be democratically accessible. We collectively own accumulated knowledge of the world. What are the costs of sharing?

Letting the entire world in on your life? If you've nothing to hide--so what??? I highly recommend "The Circle"! Its company mission is: The 'Circlers' people who work at "The Circle , are an inspiration when they Open themselves UP -- willing to share their life to further collective knowledge. They are assets to humankind! The 24 year old 'newbie' to "The Circle"! To Buy the book: Contact "The Circle" Company. View all 28 comments. We all know the world is too big for us to be significant.

So all we have is the hope of being seen, or heard, even for a moment. I went into this one a little tired from the mild let-downs that some of my more recent reads have been and wanting to take a quick breather from my list of upcoming pre-release reviews. This one was released in I am delighted to say that this novel, The Circle by Dave Eggers, really blew me away! View all 21 comments. Sep 24, Ron Charles rated it liked it Shelves: Dave Eggers is having a Klout moment: The blogosphere has lit up like the aurora borealis. At pages, this relentless broadside against the corrosive effects of the connected life is as subtle as a sponsored tweet.

His parable of technological madness reads like a Bu Dave Eggers is having a Klout moment: One member of this triumvirate is Ty, a socially awkward visionary who wears an enormous hoodie. Tell your lawyers to stand down, Mark. As the weeks pass, Eggers buries poor Mae beneath an ever-expanding range of technological distractions: But she keeps poking around the dark underbelly of the headquarters, not knowing what she might StumbleUpon next.

The corporation rolls out one miraculous new service after another, from cheap little Web cameras to monitor every spot on Earth no more crime! Your space is MySpace. Part of respecting privacy might be leaving readers space to draw their own interpretations. On the other hand, who can afford subtlety in these latter days of Jenna Marbles and apps for babies? There may come a day when we can look back at this novel with incredulity, but for now, the mirror it holds up is too chilling to LOL. View all 16 comments. Sep 12, brian rated it liked it. View all 13 comments.

May 15, Starjustin rated it really liked it. A possible present day dystopian novel involving a young girl, Mae, as the protagonist who starts in a dead end job, is divorced, has two parents, one of which is not well, and is also separated from her very best friend Annie. Annie works for the 'Circle', the number one internet management company in the world. When Mae is hired at the 'Circle' with the help of her friend Annie, life-changing experiences lead her into a different world, a world we could all envision ourselves in someday. My tho A possible present day dystopian novel involving a young girl, Mae, as the protagonist who starts in a dead end job, is divorced, has two parents, one of which is not well, and is also separated from her very best friend Annie.

My thoughts, the book was long for me, over pages, drawn out, with a very unexpected ending. I'm not trying to say this in a negative fashion. I enjoyed the book. The story was made into a movie and I am looking forward to seeing it. View all 34 comments. Jul 04, Madeline rated it it was ok Shelves: If I had to come up with a one-sentence summary for this book, it would be this: May Holland is a recent college graduate living sometime in the near future, when a company called the Circle has created a monopoly on all technology.

The Circle has created TrueYou, a system that links a person's ent If I had to come up with a one-sentence summary for this book, it would be this: The Circle has created TrueYou, a system that links a person's entire online presence - social media, email, bank accounts, etc - under one account and one name. Online anonymity is a thing of the past, and the entire world is connected by the Circle.

May's friend is one of the top employees at the Circle, and through her influence, May manages to get a job at one of the world's most influential companies. Just in case you needed an indication of where Dave Eggers ranks on the list of speculative fiction authors. We get introduced to the founders of the company referred to as the three wise men, because of course they are , and May seems to spend more time going to company parties and increasing her social media presence instead of actually working.

Because millennials , amirite guys! Meanwhile, a mysterious guy named Calden pops in and out of the narrative, and he has two purposes: Like, good lord, Madeline, we know that there's three founders and you've only met two, law of conservation of characters, etc hide spoiler ]. His second purpose is to hook up with May and provide us with some truly uncomfortable sex scenes. May also has a sort-of romance with another programmer, and all I'll say about that is that he secretly films her giving him a handjob and it's basically this Louie CK bit and then, when she finds out, refuses to delete it.

May is mad at him for about three pages, and then they're back to hanging out like nothing's wrong. I'm four paragraphs into this review and haven't even discussed May as a character. The simple fact is that there's really not much to say about May. She has a lot of scenes with one of the founders of the Circle, so he can patronizingly dismiss all of her concerns and offer up some of the worst pseudo-intelligent arguments I've ever heard - there's a scene where May goes kayaking and doesn't live-stream it on her social media feed, and the founder finds out about it and basically shames her for not sharing it with all her followers.

He tells her that he has a son who's disabled and, I shit you not, tells her that by not sharing a video of her stupid kayaking trip, she's denying his poor wheelchair-bound son the chance to experience what he can never do in real life. May's total acceptance of the Circle's creepy practices is supposed to unnerve us, and it does, but I just couldn't connect with it.

I'm a millennial, for god's sake, and even on May's first day at the Circle, she was being shown around and a million alarm bells were going off in my head. But nothing seems off to May, and she hands over her privacy without a second thought. I think Dave Eggers wanted May's total conversion to Circle-think to be gradual, so the audience thinks it's okay at first, and then she slowly gives up more and more until it's too late.

He's trying to live up to that line from The Handmaid's Tale , about how in a gradually-heating bathtub you'd boil yourself to death and never notice. I realize that this is my second Atwood comparison so far - if you take one thing away from this review, it's that Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction makes The Circle look like a toddler's crayon drawing But the ending is the most disappointing thing.

It felt like the entire book was building to something much bigger and more sinister, and I kept waiting, until the very last page, for the other shoe to drop. But it never really does, and there was never any secret, super-evil motive behind the Circle - just the usual, banal Facebook and Google style of evil, which is too realistic to be interesting. Buried deep within this book is a well-written exploration of how people can be inducted into a cult-like mentality without even realizing it, and at its best, The Circle reads like an origin story for all those teenage dystopia worlds - if you've ever wondered how a society like we see in The Hunger Games or Divergent could ever have happened, The Circle shows you exactly how it could have seemed like a good idea at the beginning.

But overall, those good ideas and concepts are just drowned under unlikeable characters, absurd plot points, and endless smug preaching about the evils of technology. I listened to this as an audiobook, and hated the reader for two reasons - first, they have a man doing the reading, even though the book is told from a woman's perspective; and also the multi-cultural staff of the Circle means the reader has to do a lot of accents, and they're So the poor listening experience might have made me dislike this book a little bit more than it deserved.

Only a little bit, though. View all 40 comments. Oct 08, Bonnie rated it did not like it Shelves: This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Mae Holland has just secured a position with The Circle thanks to her friend Annie, a high-ranking employee at The Circle. Though some sites were resistant at first, and free-internet advocates shouted about the right to be anonymous online, the TruYou wave was tidal and crushed all meaninful opposition.

It started with the commerce sites. Why would any non-porn site want anonymous users when they could know exactly who had come through the door? Overnight, all comment boards became civil, all posters held accountable. The trolls, who had more or less overtaken the internet, were driven back into the darkness. Everybody else is fully willing to give up their privacy. And I loved how the creation of the Unified Operating System, also known as TruYou, which basically took all user accounts and passwords and made them into one all encompassing login, revolutionized the Internet and prevented identity theft.

Those are Operating Systems. Computer software that manages the computers hardware. For someone that decided to write a page book dedicated to technology I would have expected him to know that at the very least. Setting all that aside I really have to mention the worst thing about this book: Not only was there a completely unnecessary romance, but the embarrassingly graphic sex scenes told from the point of view of a female were awful not to mention the scene where Mae walked in on her parents? Served absolutely no purpose to the advancement of the storyline. Here a few cringe-worthy examples: The Circle is at times a bit of a satiric story on the technological advances in this day and age but does manage to bring up some points that would be worth discussing.

The laughable ending which involves robot drones directed by social media hordes that essentially cause a murder only solidified my displeasure. Anne Wagner Seems like Eggers is afraid of using real anatomical descriptions of genitals. Are you kidding me? Yes, the non-anatomical descriptions were seriously hilarious.

I don't think that was his intention though. Well, that was an uncomfortable experience. I am not sure I have ever read a book while saying, "Nope. This is not me saying that it was bad, just that every action, every suggestion, every idea presented made me squirm. This book is less story and more about social media and technology taking over our lives.

• Rapunzel.
• Fab Five for Trigonometry Level Eighteen: Solving Trig Equations Using Fab Five!
• Five Star Gluten Free Recipes - Supreme Breakfast Collection (Incredibly Delicious Gluten Free Recipes Book 1)!
• Kit and DaPoodle;
• .
• .
• The Mystery of Arnold Hall;

The characters in the book are brainwashed lemmings who are led to believe that giving up their privacy is the most important thing in the world. Every breath must be tracked. Every opinion must be tabulated. I thought the concept of the book was interesting, but I am not sure the delivery was all that great. The main character's actions were very unbelievable and her progression through the course of the story, far fetched. The overall "story" was more about presenting little anecdotes of where we could be headed as a society than presenting a cohesive and moving narrative.

If it was presented better, I may have left with this book in my memory as a cautionary tale I must heed. Instead, I am just kind of, "Meh, some food for though, but my brain is still hungry" The book is worth checking out, especially if you have an interest in cyber-thrillers or how social media is taking over our world. But, don't go in expecting to be blown away by the writing. View all 22 comments. The concept is great, but nothing new or revolutionary. The writing is basic so it won't take long to read the book.

That's basically the good stuff. Now, I don't know if the author did it on purpose or just can't do any better, but the writing is anything but appealing, poetic or emotional in any way. It won't make you feel anything. It's shallow and dull and when the writing is this weak, so is the whole book. It was also highly repetitive and predictable and would have done perfectly fine if it was pages shorter. The simplest and most trivial conversations did not only spread over an unnecessary amount of pages, they also kept repeating themselves.

Does Dave Eggers think his readers are particularly dim-witted or what is going on here? The characters were as complicated and exciting as a potato. Worst of all is the main character, who is so naive it hurts. Way to write women, Dave! Especially because she is easily manipulated and keeps sleeping with a man that she dislikes and who is unable to please here, sexually or in any other aspect of her life.

I didn't hate or dislike this book, which is why I'm giving it two stars instead of one. I only read this because Emma Watson is starring in the screen adaption but I'm not sure I can stand to see her play such a boring and flat character. I'm not even sure how this book became this popular in the first place. Find more of my books on Instagram May 17, Trina Between Chapters rated it it was ok Shelves: Great concept, but horrible writing and execution.

I am a sucker for this type of premise, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. What you can imagine in your head is probably a better story than this book. It's getting 2 stars simply for the concept alone and because I did enjoy thinking about these things but I just kept waiting for anything to actually happen. I think what you'll get out of this book is more dependent on you than the book itself. If you aren't inherently intrigued in t Great concept, but horrible writing and execution. If you aren't inherently intrigued in the concept, you won't get much out of it.

The reason I continued reading is because this WAS a very easy read, and it didn't become super obvious that nothing would happen until very late in the book. The writing was just bad. I didn't think Eggers was good at storytelling or characterization. There's no plot, no storyarc. It's the most anticlimactic book I've ever read. It's an almost page long infodump - 20 pages detailing some new technology the Circle has created, then 5 pages of Mae at her desk doing the most mundane work tasks that we've already seen her doing 50 times before.

Mae completely lacks any personality.

See a Problem?

She cares so much about followers, but we never get a sense of why. She flip flops her opinions on all of her relationships. She's written in such a bland, misogynistic way. No personality, but you bet she has the perfect body and loves sex. The most she ever speaks is in the last pages of the book where I think she delivers a whole paragraph of dialogue, but the rest of the book shows her just mindlessly agreeing with her superiors while literally thinking that she doesn't know why she agreed.

SHE doesn't even know why she does things, so how can we? If you want to read about the rise of a dystopia with a complete absence of any resistance, this may be the book for you. I was surprised at how Mae and her coworkers just went along with everything and didn't see the problems in the society they were creating. I would have enjoyed this more if at any point a real obstacle had been included. Even in Animal Farm, which is a hopeless dystopia, there were characters who became aware of the problems even if they could not escape the system.

The Circle just lacked any sort of tension. Lastly, there was a great deal of fat phobia in the book. There is one character who is said to be 40 pounds overweight and he is constantly referred to as "Sasquatch" or "moose-man," and described as "disgusting," "grotesque," and so on. Mae also says she must have been "possessed by a demon" to have ever slept with him.

Because we all know fat people can't get laid unless a person is literally possessed. Jun 18, Will M. I hate books with unlikable characters. The mere fact that it took me 14 days to finish this short novel clearly means that something bad was going on. The novel didn't captivate me in any way possible. The premise was great, but the execution was laughable.

The Circle is a company wherein transparency is the natural law whereas secrecy is the eternal sin. An employee is trained to be competent in their jobs but they are also required to be socially active in the company. They have a facebook-lik I hate books with unlikable characters. They have a facebook-like thing going on where people "zing" each other and also give "smiles" and "frowns" to further expose their lives.

At first it was still a bit normal for Mae to succumb to such demands, but as the novel progressed, the company showed its true colors. I know it's important for them to socialize and know more about each other, but the way they did it was just wrong and I would've left the company right away. The Circle at first seemed like it was just concerned that Mae wasn't being socially active with her workmates, but it slowly turned into insanity. The Circle seemed like it had a world of its own. Actually that's the most plausible description of it.

They were constantly trying to boost their scores by updating and interacting with people in the company. Their main priority was fellow workmates. Life in the outside world was indirectly mandated as their least priority, Even family was to be considered less important than the company itself. The only thing missing would be for them to call themselves a country already, or why not a planet.



1. MySQL 5 (Spanish Edition).
2. Mincir et se réconcilier avec soi (PRATIQUE) (French Edition).
3. BDSM Office Gangbang (Tales of Sexual Domination & Submission).

For me the sense of privacy is very important. I know celebrities naturally tend to get less of this, but The Circle was just plain old absurd. I know this thin could happen in the near future, and i hope that people wouldn't be dumb enough to accept this as something normal. There is a difference between being sociable and being completely transparent. There's no need to know everything about a person, and personal information shouldn't be readily available to be viewed online by anyone.

Let me add in that the camera and mic shit going on with Mae in the near end was the epitome of absurdity. She was one of the most stupid characters ever. It's different with reality tv shows because those things are scripted anyway. The theme was great for me because like I said earlier, the possibility of this happening is not that unlikely. Unfortunately there were plenty of problems with the novel itself. The plot had no sense of pacing. It's not fair to make the readers read about Mae's first week for almost pages long.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

I almost didn't finish this novel because of the boring first half of the novel. Eggers should be thankful that I was a bit more patient with this one. Another awful thing would be the terribly boring characters. Mae was one stupid piece of transparent poop who should never be allowed to live in real life. If we have a Mae in real life, then humanity is truly in danger.

Annie was a bit interesting at first, but once The Circle was introduced she proved to be no different. She was also pretty damn stupid. All the people who were above Mae were also damn boring. From Dan to Alistair to Jared, they were all typically the same characters with different names. Same goes for Mae and Annie. The whole idea of The Circle itself.

While I stated above how opposed I was, all I'm saying is that the author tackled on a topic that I'm really interested in. What Eggers managed to fail at would be the characters and the pacing. Some parts were too long, and the good parts were also too short. May I add in that Mae's decision in the end completely destroyed whatever character development there was beforehand.

Before I end this review, let me add in the fact that I'm still excited to watch the movie because Emma Watson is going to star as Mae. Hopefully the movie would be a lot better than this, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Tempted to give this a 1 star but I didn't really hate the novel that much.

If only the characters were more interesting, this would've been a 3 or 4. Some of my friends enjoyed this a lot so I guess don't be scared to give this a try, but I'm clearly not recommending it. View all 18 comments. Oct 06, Bradley rated it really liked it Shelves: Oh wait, we all know that, that's why we're drawn to its dark, dark powers. We love to be frightened by a totalitarian regime based on widespread shaming and a few likes. Seriously, this book has some really great prose going on, imminently readable, with wonderful characters and a very good progression of plot This book takes it all the way, giving us the step by step progression of great ideas and then knocks on our door, meeting us with a huge shark face and a bunch of shark poop trailing behind him, telling us how much he loved our neighbors.

I mean, we've had great ideas turn into amazing nightmares ever since we started telling stories. I appreciated the inversion of David Brin's completely visible society, the running with the ball almost all the way through the novel, and then, SLAM, it's taken down in a paranoid frenzy, at least for the reader, telling us to be scared. Sure, it makes for a scary dystopia. The points made on either side of a complete accounting of evil-doing is pretty powerful, and timely, and well written. Unfortunately, the only thing that prevents me from giving this a full 5 stars is the fact that it's pretty old news.

And I don't believe that a company called The Circle would ever have gotten as far as it did. It was a nice thought experiment, though, and pretty decent SF. Or wait, was this supposed to be Mainstream? Firmly in the category of Cautionary Tale. Trying to convince me of something in a dramatic way. Now where should I put this Cautionary Tale?

Um, fairly amusing Social Media Slamming? I have so many choices. The dark ending might get people upset, but I'm fine with it. It's an old established rule for this type of tale. At least it's updated for Social Media versus the horrible, horrible effects of TV watching for ultimate brainwashing techniques, or the fact that radio signals are sent out there to reprogram our brain waves and hence the tin-foil hats or the fact that the cotton gin is destroying the working man and we must all rise up and destroy all such machinery, now, now, NOW!

Of course, Frankenstein was a good tale in this vein, too, as was LoTR, so perhaps it doesn't rank up with the very best, but I can say that The Circle was entertaining, though. View all 17 comments. Once upon a time, we used to think about the future and the many wonderful things we would be able to do online, and we used to say 'one day we'll be able to do this. The Circle explores this idea with stomach-churning gusto. The Circle is a disturbing book, not only because of the troubling Once upon a time, we used to think about the future and the many wonderful things we would be able to do online, and we used to say 'one day we'll be able to do this.

The Circle is a disturbing book, not only because of the troubling ideas and themes described within, but more importantly, because we live in a world where The Circle a clear surrogate for Google could easily happen. I cannot begin to mention the number of times I stopped and thought 'wow, this could happen right now and no one would bat an eyelash. It's a timely book, almost terrifyingly so. Halfway through the book, I'd mentioned that this is 's At the time, I wondered if it was exceedingly high praise.



But by its end, I was sure of it. This is a book that will cause you to pause repeatedly while reading it, pondering if the tale it tells isn't so far removed from the world we're living in right now, and that maybe - just maybe - we're just as doomed. I liked this book very much. And the book was really powerful to me. I mean, it was creeping me out!

Seriously, I should have read this for Halloween it was creeping me out so much although, of course, more on a psychological level than a physical one but that only makes the feeling stronger, right? What I quite liked was the expression of being "socially autistic" as Mercer put it at one point. I, personally, am using sites like Facebook and Twitter like many other people around the globe and like technological advances since they actually have the potential to improve our lives.

Nevertheless, I am always critical about privacy settings and I certainly don't want to be "voluntarily forced" to like posts, answer surveys and be compelled to go to matching events lateron so people rate me in a positive way online. I do not need them in order to feel heard or being seen; I don't need online confirmation and I don't give myself away to the illusion that I will leave a footprint online.

I also don't think that I have to. Moreover, I want to be able to turn my devices off at any given moment and just enjoy something only I can see without someone feeling entitled to make me feel bad about that. Call me selfish but I see nothing wrong in enjoying kayaking alone as it were in the book. Of course, that as well as the obsessive-compulsive behaviour about how many surveys one can answer daily while getting as good a social ranking as possible was only displaying some of the real fears people in our society have about social media and where it's heading.

The author did a very good job at addressing those. What was probably creeping me out the most about Mae and the other characters just like her was their unyielding way of thinking that they are ENTITLED to know everything about everyone. Another thing that sent chills down my spine were certain Circle inventions that closely resembled newly released real inventions like the Apple watch simply because it rooted the story in today's world so realistically. Another compliment goes to the author for completing the book in a very realistic way. Many criticize the lack of character development in Mae but let's be honest: Not in real life.

Some people are either so high on their horses I'm thinking of Stenton here or so blinded that they can't see the fault in what they are doing and Mae was exactly such a person. For her to change would have been too far-fetched and too utopian and simply would have ruined the ending. Oct 14, Rose Symotiuk rated it did not like it. The only thing good about this book is David Eggers writing ability. He's clearly an extremely skilled writer and it's a credit to him that I managed to finish this to the end. He could write about going to the bank and make it readable and interesting and would probably be better than this book.

The main character, Mae, brings to mind wooden, one-dimensional female characters such as Bella from Twilight and the central character of 50 Shades of Grey.

The Circle by Dave Eggers

She's a plain, boring girl from Fresno but all men fall in love with her, everyone wants to be her friend, everything she does is amazing and exceptional, and everyone just finds her so fascinating. She never question the increasingly ridiculous scenarios in the book. In fact, no one does. Except for a couple dozen people in the entire world, EVERYONE is completely happy to have chips embedded in their children, cameras put in every room of their house, and mandatory enrollment in the system for everyone on Earth.

This book makes an Ayn Rand novel seem subtle and thoughtful. It gets so ridiculous that halfway through it reads like a goofy book your Grandpa wrote about Interwebs Boogeyman. I also don't understand the people calling this a thriller. It certainly builds up like one, hinting at an uprising of people against the Circle. It builds and builds with increasingly stupid scenarios. It hints at the start of a climax in the story arc and then 2 pages later it just ends, abruptly. It's the first half of a book. Please don't spend your hard earned money on this.

The Circle

View all 11 comments. Mar 26, Trish rated it really liked it Shelves: The company in this novel is called The Circle, based loosely on what is known of the more famous real life companies. She seems to only be worried about how many people are watching her every move or commenting on all of her blog posts.

The Circle is succeeding in convincing a nation how to live their lives. It reminds me of how Hitler convinced a country that a group of people should be punished for no good reason and convinced that nation how to live their lives. I like how you compared the Circle to one of the most infamous dictators in history.

I agree in that the circle is on a mission to make Americans conform to all of its technology. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Narrative and Technology Fall This entry was posted in Uncategorized. September 28, at 9: Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: Email required Address never made public.