1. The Circle is a nice pick for The PBR Book Club. (smile face)
2. It has great one liners that can be zinged. ( smile face) ( like)
3. Example “You’re like part human, part rainbow.” ( Smile face) (followed by 100 likes).
The Circle is at its best when it describes the workplace environment. For the main character, Mae, the Circle seems like a great place from the start; "My God, it's Heaven." It is clean, open to innovation, and has many amazing extra curricular activities and events on its campus. People are hanging out on sunny days going to yoga and viewing Koyaanisqatsi.
Mae learns that working at The Circle is emotionally draining with long hours. The memorization of the "isms" of the company are daunting. By the end of the book, employees in her department look and react to nine screens simultaneously. Each aspect of her job is rated by a competitive number system, and her work and personal life are relentlessly watched and maintained by superiors. Realistically, no one could maintain this workload.
The book's main point is not about the politics involved in working in a big corporation. The Circle is a cautionary tale about privacy and social media issues. However, the second half of the book gets preachy on the topic. Perhaps the book should have ended midway.
My rating on a scale of 1-100? The book needs more love.
I'm going to miss the meeting tonight, but I just want to say that as clever and engaging as the book is, I felt Eggers lost interest in the ending. I thought of at least 2 much punchier endings. Disappointing and kind of puzzling--why did he just quit?
ReplyDelete--Camille
Camille: agreed.
ReplyDeleteI think the discussion is Thursday at 8:00 if you can make it.