Review of 'EinFach Deutsch Unterrichtsmodelle : Dave Eggers : Der Circle' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
A must-read. Update 1984 with Evgeny Morozov and you've got this at turns terrifying and hilarious not-so-fi sci-fi thriller by Eggers. It will make you reflect not only on the vulnerabilities and downsides of a "transparent" society, but on the unappealing neediness and controlling tendencies of a system that requires not only that you do what it says, but also that you "like" it. Bonus points for so effectively mocking start-up culture and techno-solutionism.
Review of 'EinFach Deutsch Unterrichtsmodelle : Dave Eggers : Der Circle' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
2016 Edit: In hindsight I think the parts I found dissatisfying, were meant to be so. I think I tried to take the book at face value, and to do justice, it required more than that.
This was super long and I kept reading it with the hope that it would get better or that Mae would get better, but to no avail. For me, this book missed the mark somewhere. Maybe its that Mae is so unaware and brainwashed and there wasn't anyone who was a counterpoint to her who's not just dismissed as being crazy.
Review of 'EinFach Deutsch Unterrichtsmodelle : Dave Eggers : Der Circle' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
“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.
Review of 'EinFach Deutsch Unterrichtsmodelle : Dave Eggers : Der Circle' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Some writers don't like social media. That's fine. Some writers feel the need to write ranting diatribes against social media, employing every caricature and stereotype of social media. Such a writer is Dave Eggers with The Circle.
Review of 'EinFach Deutsch Unterrichtsmodelle : Dave Eggers : Der Circle' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
The way Dave Eggers can adopt different writing styles is something I find impressive. Since The Circle is a cautionary tale about a dystopia caused by an all-encompassing social-media gone wild, it seems appropriate that Eggers write in a simplistic style. Unfortunately, I couldn't help but find this annoying, but then, I also did not like the main character, Mae Holland.
Mae is a couple years out of college, still living at home and reporting to a job that is drudgery. Conveniently, she has a friend, Annie, who suddenly gets her a dream job, a job that seems to be surprisingly simple. The glamor and benefits of this position, which involve covering her parents on her health insurance, make this job an asset that Mae is loathe to lose. She needs to fit in, and this means spending more and more time online, at work, and eventually swallowing the idea …
The way Dave Eggers can adopt different writing styles is something I find impressive. Since The Circle is a cautionary tale about a dystopia caused by an all-encompassing social-media gone wild, it seems appropriate that Eggers write in a simplistic style. Unfortunately, I couldn't help but find this annoying, but then, I also did not like the main character, Mae Holland.
Mae is a couple years out of college, still living at home and reporting to a job that is drudgery. Conveniently, she has a friend, Annie, who suddenly gets her a dream job, a job that seems to be surprisingly simple. The glamor and benefits of this position, which involve covering her parents on her health insurance, make this job an asset that Mae is loathe to lose. She needs to fit in, and this means spending more and more time online, at work, and eventually swallowing the idea that she has no right to any privacy. There are a couple people in her life who try to be voices of reason, but Mae has already been rendered unable to hear and converse in person, or so it would seem.
The Circle is not just a job, it's a cult, and that might explain why Mae Holland becomes such a swiftly rising star--she wants to be liked so badly that that becomes her life's work. Whatever the leaders want from her, she will do and she will find a way of justifying it. In the end, she cannot fathom that she has actually hurt her parents and destroyed a couple friends. This bright person has been rendered vacuous.
Without revealing too much about the plot, I would say that there were some aspects of this story that seemed too far-fetched to me (such as the idea of total transparency), and other parts that were dropped (no backlash about what happened to poor Mercer? Really? And what really happens to Kalden?). What were the worldwide implications of completing the circle? This novel seems to focus on life on The Circle's campus, since Mae so seldom leaves it.
Of course, this all makes for interesting and important discussion. Overall, even though I was a little disappointed, I still liked this tale.
Review of 'EinFach Deutsch Unterrichtsmodelle : Dave Eggers : Der Circle' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Maybe a little more on the nose than it needed to be, still, an engaging story. If Michael Crichton were still living and chose to turn his writing skills toward the topic of social media, this is the type of story we'd get. An entertaining read.
Review of 'EinFach Deutsch Unterrichtsmodelle : Dave Eggers : Der Circle' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
An entertaining and important read. It captures how the benign motivations and "world-changing" promise of trends like the gamification of our daily activities, the pressure to keep abreast of an increasing number of data feeds on multiple screens, the ubiquity of cameras equipped with facial recognition capabilities, GPS tracking, electronic voting, and even privately-operated drones, can turn threatening, and it does so in the context of a compelling story with well-drawn characters. These are not new ideas, but he pulls them together in a way that ably demonstrates the way they are insidiously creeping into our daily experience. As usual, Eggers gets a little too enthusiastic about thumping the reader over the head with obvious metaphors (hello, shark with an insatiable appetite!), but overall I really enjoyed this book. Probably my favorite Eggers novel since What is the What.
