I read this on the recommendation of a friend and the strength of a short story by Eggers (which either turned into the longer work or was excerpted from this novel). It's also interesting that I read this right after Mr. Penumbra's, which prominently features the power of (and cult of) Google. Anyway, it was okay - some parts were good, some heavy-handed, maybe because Mae was so easily pliable, so much the Circle drone, I almost never had a moment of recognizing myself in her. Well, that's not completely true, right? I'm using Goodreads to rate my feelings about this book, after all. Anyway, perhaps I just never got to a point where I found Eggers' doom about social media plausible. Although the bits about the criminal justice system, and all this recent talk about putting body cameras on our police, sounds a little like an idea spawned from the Circle. Anyway, it was interesting food for thought even if I never really cared for anyone in the book. I just resist the idea that a "dystopian fable" therefore gets a pass on the emotionally affective scale - ever read Handmaid's Tale, or Never Let Me Go? Yeah. Books can be scarily prophetic of the future without sacrificing emotional heft.