Amazon.ca:Customer reviews: The Circle

Lexy

Good book

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 25, 2022

Verified Purchase

Some of the pages are worn but still very readable! Can’t go wrong with the price.

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SBuckle

Questions the legitimately of online interactions

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 17, 2013

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In the world Eggers creates, the Circle is central to life. The Circle is Facebook, Google, InterACT, banks, CCTVs, musuems all combined into one behemoth company that wants to act as the hub of all information and communication. The power with that is enormous as Eggers illustrates throughout the book via our main character Mae Holland, a new hire to the Circle. While the concentration and unfettered expansion of technology into our lives is met with Eggers' skepticism - much like any concentration of power should be - the idea of what constitutes human interaction is what was most interesting for me.

Eggers shows us a world where people are anchored to a screen and communication and emotion shared via social media. Even the 'offline' events the Circle hosts are centered around the online. While Eggers' shows us a world of the extreme, where online has entirely supplanted offline, it certainly raises questions as to the real value of social interaction via Facebook and the like today. Are these interactions as real as in-person or not? If not, what then are your obligations within the social world and how do these obligations square away with your 'friends' expectations?

Overall, a great book with a quick pace unlike Eggers. While Eggers admits he did no research on social media companies, his idea of one feels legitimate, which is probably why a bunch of the silicon valley nerds have tried to pick this book apart.

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Shaun T

Amazon Beats Chapters Hands Down

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 19, 2023

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Amazon consistently provides books faster, better and cheaper than Chapters. You'd think that odd, considering Chapters only sells books, right?

The last time I ordered from Chapters, three books - packaged in a single layer of plain brown paper, were left on my doorstep in the pouring rain. They were absolutely ruined. Chapters never responded to my complaints, so I vowed to only order from Amazon. I've never looked back.

And this book? An interesting read. So much so, it's worth picking up the sequel, "The Every," which, it just so happens, is critical of an "ecommerce behemoth named after a South American jungle."

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Paul Barter

Meh

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 20, 2014

Verified Purchase

The Circle raises an all-too-real scenario for a hyper connected world. We should be increasingly skeptical of technologists offering utopian visions of the future without thoughtfully considering the associated risks. We should also be concerned about any single firm controlling too much of the digital landscape. The topic is important and I'm glad that it has generated a conversation.

The problem with The Circle is that it's just not very well written. The writing is simplistic and repetitive and from half way through the book the outcome is completely predictable. In a genre populated by predecessor books such as 1984 we deserve a better and more nuanced look at the challenges and opportunities of our digital age.

6 people found this helpful

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colleen m. subasic

A worthy read

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 25, 2016

Verified Purchase

Fascinating and timely concept. Some weaknesses on craft. Still a worthy read.

Our online lives are taking over, and Eggers recreates the potential nightmare scenario quite well, with The Circle posing as a Google/Facebook. The main character, Mae, is a ghost with character traits tagged on like ornaments on a Christmas tree. She is the cheerleader for The Circle, which is moving toward having everyone live 'transparently,' meaning living on camera for the world to see. She lusts after Kalden, a mysterious co-worker who has access to the company's inner sanctum. As The Circle reaches 'completion' (everyone in the world with an account) Kalden tries to convince Mae of the dangers. But she'll have none of it.

It's an interesting (and challenging) choice to have a protagonist we gradual stop rooting for and become convinced is evil. I enjoyed the pace and found the story gripping.

However, promises of resonance aren't delivered. One more re-write and a stronger editorial hand might have got it there. What I'd like to see here is deeper insights into what our online lives mean; the pros and cons. Instead we get a 'what if' that certainly is nightmarish, and in some ways believable, but sheds little light on the struggle.

Point of view changes are mis-handled and so occasional it's irking. I'm surprised editing didn't catch them.

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R. Stumbur

So not what I expected

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 3, 2023

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I’ve used the movie “The Circle” for teaching my students about Organizational Behaviour because it showcases human behaviour so well. The book is so much deeper, darker, and yet truthful. Amazing!

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Robert P. Brown

Disturbing Reality

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 2, 2015

Verified Purchase

Mae Holland thinks she has died and gone to heaven. She has just landed a job at a company called the Circle, as a Customer Experience Representative. Free clothes, food, health care, even rooms where one can take a nap, what could be better? And what a group to work with! Around ten thousand, but each one looking out for the other, a human place, a community.

There are two sides to the company. Externally it runs TruYou, where every member is given a secure, lifetime account in their own name, which enables them, with one click of a button, to do everything online, all of it traceable, seen and being seen, no more passwords, false identities, etc. The Circle has also been setting up small cameras called SeeChange pretty much everywhere,. All that happens will be known.

Internally, each employee wears a bracelet which records, monitors and exposes every part of their life. There is a Customer Experience Rating based upon the number of smiles and frowns they receive, and a Participation Rank based on their interrelationship with their fellow employees; events attended, number of zings (tweets) sent and received, photos posted, etc. Interaction and transparency are the keys, because SECRETS ARE LIES, SHARING IS CARING, PRIVACY IS THEFT.

All of this is eagerly embraced by Mae. When her parents and former boyfriend point out that she is losing her identity and they want no part of it, she tries to convince them they are on the wrong side of history. "It was comical and it was sad, and it served no purpose, to put off the undeniable present, the unavoidable future."

Some reviewers have commented on the weakness of the plot. But I believe that Eggars wasn`t concerned with that, the story, such as it is, is simply a device to get his message across. (This is not new, think Ayn Rand.) And the message is that we`re going to hell in a hand basket; the Government controls us and privacy is out the window. Most of this has been brought on by ourselves. People can`t get enough of Social Media, they tweet, they text, they post "selfies", personal information and pictures online. The only people who seem to avoid transparency are politicians and Canadian senators.

Had this book been published thirty years ago, it would have been disturbing Science Fiction. Today it is disturbing reality.

3 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

excellent book and very informative

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 19, 2023

Verified Purchase

very well written, informative. easy to read. recommend it 100%

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Len

An all too plausible "1984" scenario. Very disturbing indeed.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 24, 2013

Verified Purchase

“The Circle” depicts a nightmare scenario in the near future when all our movements can be monitored and privacy becomes practically non-existent. Mae Holland has recently graduated from university and hates her IT job with an energy company in the same small town occupied by her parents. So desperate is she for a change that she contacts her old dorm roommate who works for The Circle, a company whose brainchild envisioned and created an internet one-stop site instead of a separate one for searching, and purchasing and interacting with friends. Three "Wise Men” envision a company not only able to monitor every form of communication but also movement with the goal of knowing where every person is at any particular moment but also what they're doing. It's sold under the auspices of improving service and safety. If the movement of every criminal can be monitored 24/7, then how can there be crime. Like today, infringements are individual privacy are made incrementally until there is no privacy at all. Mr. Eggers' world is not a huge extension of the one in which we exist now with government agencies such as the U.S.. National Security Agency and Canada’s CSEC capable of gaining access to all correspondence we make over the internet. Very disturbing indeed.

5 people found this helpful

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Ritchie

Interesting story concept but a huge letdown!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 24, 2017

Verified Purchase

The value of privacy and the consequences associated with its loss is a very current and relevant topic of discussion in 2017. However after a strong opening to this subject, the book fritters away to be more about self importance and various silly love interests which go no where. Unfortunately this book could have provoked much deep thought and projection but it ultimately couldn't have ended soon enough. Too bad!

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5 star		30%
4 star		30%
3 star		22%
2 star		11%
1 star		7%

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