Audiobook Review: The Circle by Dave Eggers

Publisher: Random House Audio
Release Date: October 8th, 2013
Length: 13 hours, 42 minutes
Narrator: Dion Graham

Synopsis

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.

As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in America - even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

What Did I Think About the Story?

I absolutely love the concept of this book! I, like a lot of people, have lots of social media accounts and really enjoy interacting with people online as well as having nearly endless purchasing power right at the ends of my fingertips, no matter where I am. The thought of having all of these various accounts connected in one place, with one log in, sounds amazing!! So does the idea that having more transparency online might bring an end to internet trolling. What could go wrong with this idea? Oh, so many things!

I will fully admit that, if I was a young, single twenty-something person growing up in today's expanded world of technology, I would probably itch, at least at first, to work at a company like the Circle, if for no other reason than being at the forefront of technological advances (which I very much enjoyed learning about within this story) and having so much excitement and innovation - endless parties, endless products to try, the best of everything - always available right there at the company. This, on the surface, seems almost perfect doesn't it? I mean sure, you're expected to put in a lot of extra hours at work and don't get to see your family and friends as much as you used to. But look at all the benefits the job brings! This surface excitement slowly seeps away, however, when you discover just how invasive and stressful this sort of world could actually be.

Through Mae the reader gets to see this invasiveness, where people can see and hear what you are doing literally at every second of the day and at least some of the night, where every messy situation that any normal human experiences with their family and friends is laid bare for anyone to analyze and comment on. You also get to see how stressful it could become when people have constant expectations that you will answer their texts, like their products or services instantly, share their information online, not only join their groups and organizations but also attend them, rate every single place you visit, food you consume, product you use...it's endless madness! There is no way that any human can do all of the things having such an online presence would demand and still be present in the physical life they should actually be living. And there lies the rub.

I will admit that I wasn't a huge fan of any of the characters. They all, probably predictably, are quite self-centered and selfish by nature, and I've never been a big fan of people like this in reality. The narrator also made many of their voices almost comical in nature (I'm not sure if this was intentionally done or not) so they became almost caricatures, or ironic representations, of real people instead of actually feeling real. Some of this feeling might be due to the fact that I don't live in a fast-paced, hipster sort of world, so I don't come across people like this very often, but that was the impression I got from these characters regardless. I will say that the  narrator did an excellent job of giving voice to the frenetic nature of the Circle as well as the build up of stress and anxiety that would become inherent in people working there. I won't say too much regarding the lengths Mae will go to in order to become an integral part of the Circle, but the farther and farther she went down that rabbit hole the less and less sympathetic a character she became. Her total immersion did make the ending wonderfully unnerving in a subtle sort of way, so maybe my aggravation in her character, and most of the others, needed to happen in order to get to that seemingly inevitable ending. Whatever the reason I'm just glad I don't have to deal with frenetic, selfish people like they employ at the Circle in my life!

The Circle was definitely entertaining as well as being a social commentary on the ever-increasing reliability on online presences and social media and a warning of what can happen if that reliability goes too far. I read somewhere that the book is like the offspring of 1984 and Black Mirror and I think that is the perfect way to describe it. Definitely worth a read or listen-to if you're looking for something to keep you interested until the end. I'm now excited to watch the movie and see how it compares!  

What Did I Think About the Cover?

This cover doesn't do anything for me. I can see where the many interconnected and overlapping rings might represent the hive-like structure of the Circle and how they all sort of form a barrier around the central, almost closed circle, however I typically prefer a little more....something, anything...in a cover. With all that is going on within the story it seems like a better cover could have been created.


My Rating: 4.0/5.0

I borrowed a copy of The Circle from my library's Overdrive account. All opinions are mine alone. You can find more information about the book, including other reviews and links to where you can purchase a copy, on Goodreads HERE.




It's Time to #GetIndie with Litsy!

Back in May I shared an interview I did with one of the co-founders of Out of Print in which we discussed their newest adventure, the social media app Litsy (see the post HERE). Since then I've become somewhat obsessed with the app, checking it almost every day for new book recommendations, fun bookish pictures, and to share the new books I'm receiving and reading all the time. It truly is an amazing and inclusive community of book lovers, with more than 30,000 members in 125 countries. And all since April!

I wanted to share with everyone a new campaign going on over at Litsy, one that was described to me as " a fusion of social discovery and support within the book community and backed by a renowned author." Amy Stewart, author of the newly released Lady Cop Makes Trouble, is leading this social media campaign on her book tour, sharing with everyone all the books that Independent booksellers are recommending to their patrons as well as the booksellers, and their delightful stores, themselves. What isn't there to love about this?! Here's more information about the #GetIndie campaign:

Amy’s September 2016 book tour has been converted into a Litsy-based indie bookstore lovefest. At each bookstore, Amy will post about her book as well as other books supported by independent venues. The movement will build an alliance for indie bookstores, as the country boasts hundreds of venues with authors promoting their books at each location daily.

Social media is all about discoverability. Litsy displays how we interact with books and since each post is tied to a book, the #getindie campaign highlights what authors and readers are finding in specific stores.

Amy’s getting the community involved by requesting their support by visiting their favorite independent bookstore, giving a shout-out to a book through a blurb or post and include the #getindie hashtag. She’s also recruited many other authors, including Alexander Chee and Christina Baker Kline.

Look for it under the #getindie hashtag on Litsy.  

 

 

 

Inkwood Books in Tampa, FL



 

I recently shared my favorite local Indie Bookstore, Inkwood Books, on Litsy with the #getindie hashtag. I've gone to a number of different author events at Inkwood Books, as well as attended events that discussed upcoming books they are excited about and of course just gone in to shop. I'm looking forward to possibly joining one of their monthly book clubs as well...they have all sorts of exciting stuff going on over there!

 

 

Barbara Davis author event at Inkwood Books

 

Does anyone else have a favorite Independent Bookstore in their town? Is anyone else on Litsy? If so I would love to connect! You can find me on there as Colleen Turner or candc320, so come find me or leave your Litsy name in the comments!

 

 

 

Interview with Todd Lawton, Cofounder of Out of Print and Litsy

Hello, Todd, and welcome to A Literary Vacation! I have to say that I was very excited when the offer to interview you came my way. I absolutely love your company Out of Print and am so excited to learn more about your newest venture, the social app Litsy. So thank you for taking the time to answer my questions!


First off, can you tell us a little about Out of Print? What prompted you to start the company and to donate a book to a community in need for every product sold?

L-R: Todd Lawton & Jeff LeBlanc



My best friend from the second grade, Jeff LeBlanc, and I started Out of Print six years ago. We love to talk about the books that are important to us and felt there was an opportunity to bring more people into the discussion about books through merchandise. Essentially, we set off to become the band tee for the literary set. Soon it became clear that Out of Print could be much more than a book tee company. In addition to selling shirts and accessories to support reading, we reserve a portion of our sales to help improve access to books and fund reading programs around the world. To date, we have donated over 1.7 million books to communities in need.

I happen to love your T-shirts, totes, and notebooks but there are so many more great things to buy. Where do you come up with the ideas for the wonderful merchandise and select which books you’ll highlight?

Early on, before we had customers, it was all on Jeff and me to come up with the collection. Soon after we sold our first shirt, requests for new titles from our customers came flooding in. Now, we primarily refer to our customer requests--and which books we can properly license, but that's a whole other conversation.

 

 

 

Has the company changed at all since it’s grown and become more popular?

Not significantly. We're still focused on making reading fun and shareable. Each year, we look back and are in awe of what we accomplished and how many readers we have reached. To hear that we've been spotted in some store or other random place still gets us so excited. We like being the little guy making waves in a big industry.   

 

 

 



Now tell us about Litsy. What prompted you to start this wonderful social community for bookish people like us? Was there a gap in what was currently out there that you saw needed to be filled?



With Out of Print, the goal was always to encourage conversations around books. The idea of Litsy felt like a natural extension of our mission—to support this important dialogue around the authors and titles we love. We found that readers were using several different places to have these conversations—reviews in one place, photos of book covers on another, quotes somewhere else—so we set out to create a central space offering these functionalities for all things book related.

 

 

 

I’ve been playing around with the app a little bit and I think what I love most is the fact that it seems to be this great combination of Goodreads (bringing readers and authors together to share reviews and recommendations), Twitter (limit of 300 characters per post), and Instagram (the lovely pictures!). How did you come up with this great format? Are there any other features I haven’t discovered yet? Are you looking to add any other features?

 

 

 

There's magic and joy in talking about books. We wanted the experience on Litsy to capture that. We're focused on conversation, connection and organization. We believe that limiting posts to 300 characters or less will lend itself to a more casual, streaming dialogue. Being mobile gives readers an outlet for all their bookish moments, whenever and wherever they have them.

A really useful feature, in our opinion, are the Stacks. With Stacks, users can create lists of what they’re currently reading, what they’ve read, as well as what they want to read next. Users can add books to their stacks by using the Search function (one can search for a title or author, read a summary of the book, and see what other users are saying about it), or a user can Stack directly from somebody else’s post. Your own Stacks can be accessed right on your profile, and it can be really interesting to view what others are reading next!

As we continue to grow the community and the conversations continue to happen, we will create more ways to showcase trending books and connect readers based on reading preferences.

 

Something else I find really interesting is the Litfluence score each person who uses the app gets, which shows their “bookprint” in the world. Can you tell us more about this and how the score is calculated?

 

 



 

 

We are nerds for stats on this end, so we thought Litfluence would be a fun tool for readers. A Litfluence score comprises a combination of likes on a post, the number of comments received, and how many books other users have stacked from a post—it’s a representation of user engagement. This page also shows users how many books and pages they’ve read.

 

 

 



Is there anything else you want to tell us about Litsy?

 

We have a long queue of ideas, additional features, and future models, so what you see now is only the beginning. We are developing more every day, and can’t wait to show the world what’s next!

 

 

 

Thank you so much, Todd, for answering my questions!

 

Everyone, if you haven't checked out Out of Print yet, you really need to do so! There collection of shirts, totes, and accessory is wonderful and the fact that each product purchased results in a book being donated to a community in need makes it that much more satisfying. So it's really a win-win!

 

I am also very excited to share with you all their newest venture, the social media app Litsy. I've been having so much fun interacting with other bookish people and starting to add books to my stacks. The app is currently only available for iOS but they are working on expanding out to other operating systems. If you do have an Apple product download it today and come follow me at candc320. I'll follow you back and we can get our own corner of this newest bookish community building!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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