The Circle by Dave Eggers

"No one’s forcing you to do this. You willingly tie yourself to these leashes. And you willingly become utterly socially autistic. You no longer pick up on basic human communication clues. You’re at a table with three humans, all of whom are looking at you and trying to talk to you, and you’re staring at a screen, searching for strangers in Dubai."

A world where the fear of not knowing is eliminated. Crime ceases to exist. Lies are never told again. All in the name of transparency. Sounds great right? The circle dives into the implications of the advancements of technology and social media and what could happen if our online presence began to overtake our individuality. 

The book starts out with the main character, Mae Holland, who lands her dream job working for The Circle thanks to a recommendation from her college friend, Annie Allerton. Slowly but surely Mae begins to realize that while it's nice to have a well-paying and steady job, that it is rather hard to break out of the mold for what is considered "normal" to her co-workers. Constant access to social media, alerting everyone about what you are doing 24/7, constantly being transparent about every detail of your life is all the name of the game. 

Mae seems to be fine with this new lifestyle until a new mysterious figure shows up in the shadows that challenges her and the companies way of thinking- Kalden. What is right and what is wrong quickly become intertwined in a vicious cycle of battling for privacy that seems to have no end.

While this isn't the best book I've ever read it's far from the worst. It did an excellent job of making me consider just how much of our privacy is compromised by technology and social media and why I should think twice before making all of my information available (sort of ironic I'm currently posting to a blog now that I think about it).

My biggest qualms with The Circle is how unattached I felt to the characters. Each person seemed very bland and part of a mold. But- this could have been intentional in order to demonstrate how the more and more each person tried to conform to The Circle's way of life, the less interesting they actually became.

Overall it was a decent read!