Week Seven Blog Post

Topic #4 -- Media Product Review

I have read the book “The Circle” by Dave Eggers. It is an incredible, suspenseful book filled with the obsession of social media. Below is a photo that briefly describes the Circle and its morals. The Circle was recently made into a movie as well, I have yet to see it. This book focus’ on a female main character named Mae Holland. Her best friend Annie gets her a job at the most prestigious company, The Circle. The Circles goal is to connect everything; bank accounts, employers, media accounts, devices and more. This story follows her journey through the company. The author, Dave Eggers, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and earlier founded a magazine company. He also co-wrote the screenplay for Where the Wild Things Are. IDreamBooks states, “The Circle has a score of 66% based on reviews from 50 critics”. I thought the books was a lot better than a 66% but I really enjoy books that follow plots similar to this one. This book is very unique and follows a dystopian style plot. Dave Eggers is author to only four other books, all of which differ in style and plot completely. This book reminds of the 1984 by George Orwell. It’s a dystopian world, but instead of censoring the world, they create a world where all people, places, and companies are “transparent”, showing the world everything they do.

I believe this book is important to culture because is shows us how much social media and device obsession can ruin us. It takes away from real life and creates a barrier. This definitely reflects our culture and reminds me of the “influencers” on instagram and twitter, people who are paid to advertise and post and make brands looks incredible. It’s not always the most truthful. I think the target audience is teens and those intrigued by the effects of the media. This book really doesn’t focus on stereotypes or offensive messages. I think this book uses vague descriptions of secondary characters and focus’ primarily on the main character in order to avoid stereotypes. This book uses intense descriptions and intriguing messages to keep readers engaged. It creates a world and a company you want to be apart of and that you want to be involved with. I think this book is great and the authors best work! I will be suggesting this book for days on end. The critics thought the book was interesting! NY Times wrote a great article here! I’m also going to link the GoodReads page so you can see the reviews of the general public! Most people seem to not enjoy the book as much as I did, but it’s all about personal opinion! I purchased the hard copy of the book and the audio version so I could listen to it in the car. I did not buy any more of this artists work and I’m not big on interacting with the author or on social medias. I have yet to share this with friends and family.

By doing this critique I learned new things about the author and that my opinion differs from a large population of the readers of The Circle. I really enjoyed doing this and I hope from this you are interested in reading this book!