BOOK CLUB | The Circle by Dave Eggers

What happened to the summer! How is July already over?

This month’s book club read was The Circle by Dave Eggers. All signs, reviews, and summaries were positioning this book in our minds as a life-changing read!

I always hear people my parent’s age talking about how “millennials” are too obsessed with cell phones and social media. I used to roll my eyes at this when I was in high school, but now at age 25 I’m beginning to see just how different technology (specifically social media) is altering how children are growing up and experiencing things.

The Circle is about a girl names Mae Holland who gets hired to work for “The Circle” (aka Google). The book followers her from her first day on the new job, being nervous and technologically challenged, to months later when she is projecting every second of her life to millions of viewers (they literally watch the back of the bathroom stall as she pees…. weirddddd!).

At times this book is very far fetched, but at other times it sounds like they are describing present day (which is a scary realization).

NOTE: Do NOT read this book if you are looking for amazing literature, character development, or a wild ending.

I suggest you only read the first half of this book and then stop. Mainly because it begins to drag in the second half with no real exciting or meaningful ending. But also because this book does a much better job of making you think in the first half. It presents the idea that soon there won’t be anything in the world that you can keep to yourself. No more secrets. There’s no such thing as “personal” anymore in the eyes of The Circle.

This book sparked some interesting discussions in book club about what things you should be allowed to keep private, why people are so obsessed with posting to social media, and what will happen when we have children. (Will we be like those annoying moms who post pictures of their child on Facebook five times a day because they “counted to 10 backwards”?? )

Rating: 3 out of 5

Here are some great discussion questions for The Circle if you read this for your book club as well! Even if you didn’t, they will still start a great discussions in your own head :)

Have you read this book? What were your thought?

P.S. The main character Mae drove me up a wall (just like she drove Mercer off a cliff)!

P.P.S. Photo credit goes out to my best friend who bought the book. I listened to it on Audible, which was a mistake! All of the main characters were women… listening to the man narrate women’s voices 90% of the time was rough.

P.P.P.S. My P.P.S. comment brought up a very interesting discussion in book club about male author’s writing about female friendships. We all felt the description of Annie’s and Mae’s relationship was  elementary and just humorous. After much debate and examples of this, we concluded that it was because a man was trying to describe a female relationship… and that could just never possibly be accurate.