Review: The Circle

The Circle by Dave Eggers
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Was put of reading it by the many not so good reviews, and now at 27% I am sure I should have DNF'ed it earlier - if not for the fact, that I want to compare it to the German book (available in some other languages, but not English, as far as I have checked) ZERO. That one was a fast paced page-turner and also some philosophical commentary on out current reality re-Facebook/Twitter/Mail/Snowden/Anonymous/etc. - something to think about.

So far, that is all missing here, most is boring work-stuff and some inner dialogue from the unsure and un-likeable MC, boring. May well be a 1 star end-result, but I still have hope.
So far could have been cut about 80% without missing any story.

MC is a spineless git, putty in the hands of her superiors and co-workers.
51% Update:
Some Sex-Scenes, but still mostly boring, very little happens, just too much work and too many things for the MC to do simultaneously - pressure gets higher, but no suspense and not very interesting. Real interesting things are integrated very subtly, the things Circle is doing, also with the critics, are nearly hidden in the non-story of the MC. Which makes me fear if I try to read this in Fast-Forward, I will miss the few good points this book tries to make.
But it drags on and on, and I have yet started a second (and third and ...) book in-between reading.

30-Dec-2016 / 68% Hope to finish it this year (2016), might go FF till the ending. One of the most boring books. Reading both Circle and (with a different cover, the Movie-tie-in-Cover) and hope to finish both before 2017 starts wither a whimper, not with a bang.
And then I will probably never again start a book by this incredibly bad author. Hopefully the movie is more entertaining.

28-Jun-2017 / 81% yawn, going through the motions. Will try to end this one way or the other this year, hopefully. Worst writing ever. Promising idea butchered by someone who does not know how to write interesting.

Ending was ok.
So 2 stars, not recommended, so far one of the worst written books I finished - somehow, with going fast-forward through the text - 1 star for the idea, 1 star for the ending.
As I tend to rate the ending with a star, you might think, 2 stars is too much.

Too long chapters, no action, nearly no sex, unlikeable, unbelievable bad MC, who is the typical cult-follower, would have felt right at home in Manson's Clan. This book could have done with more action, more sex, more everything. Instead it consists of the inner thoughts of a person I would glad to not ever have known her. For some reason I think of Katniss (Tributes of Panem), with all the manipulation. Only Katniss was for the Greater Good, while this one (name forgotten) is not.

So not recommended, stay away from this author and this time-waster of a book. Hopefully someone more skilled writes a better book with the same idea. The time it took me to get through this, with more than a year (May 2016 till July 2017) is testament I should have DNF'ed this in the beginning, but I was blended as this is supposed to be a bestseller AND filmed. OK, now I have been burned by quite a few books (Gone Girl, probably also Girl on a train, not DNF yet), so I should know better, I will try to keep that in mind for the future.



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