The Circle (Spoiler Alert)

The Circle by Dave Eggers is about a Google style technology company dominating the internet in the near future. The Circle (also the name of the company) connects all of your internet accounts into one login. However they later branch into a variety of various projects in an attempt to make the world a better place. By the end The Circle gains control of the US government with plans to control other government as well. They control over 90% of all the worlds’ searches with no competition in the search engine industry.

            

When I first started reading The Circle I was impressed. The Circle seemed to be a benevolent company doing their best to advance human rights around the world. The best mind of a generation working together to make the world the best it ever has or could be. But as the book went on I grew nervous about what The Circle’s end game was. They gained more and more power and gained more control over the public sector.

           

The Circle took control of the US government and made it illegal to not have a Circle account. They stripped people of their privacy and because they were so used to no one put up a fight. This book really scared me because it painted a picture of a world where any government instantly knows about dissent. A world where the world government is controlled by a single, private, corporation. A world where that single, private corporation controls all the information in the world. Think about how most modern uprisings have taken place, through social media. But if the government controls social media, as well as every other way of communicating. There are also video cameras placed everywhere. How can an uprising take place? People have no privacy, not to mention the violation of Fourth Amendments rights. The Fourth Amendments states that the government cannot search or seize you property without a warrant. But all of that is irrelevant if the government has cameras and sensors in every one’s home that measure your every movement and call the police if you make a movement that is sudden or sharp.

          

The Circle may have started with the right idea, but it grew out of control. It took over the world, creating a perfect Big Brother society. But the kicker is that everyone is either happy with Big Brother, or being chased, and pulled in to the society by those who do.    

The Stolen Party is a book about classism. Rosaura is poor because her mother is poor. The difference between her and her mother is that Rosaura has a way out of poverty because she is doing well in school. Rosaura goes to a rich friends birthday party where her mother works. She is asked to help serve food and drink thought the party. At the end instead of a gift from the goody-bag, she is given money as payment for helping. Rosaura is angry about this.

Rosaura wants to be an equal to her rich friends but as it mentions in the book she slips unseen from the party multiple times. This shows how little care they give her and is an allusion to how little some rich people care about those with less money. She is also raised differently then many of the other rich kids. She lives a life in which she is physically active when apparently the others do not. This becomes clear when she wins many of the party games. This is an allusion the the "Idle Rich."

  Senora Ines, Luciana's mother sees Rosaura as nothing more then a copy of her mother. (Luciana is Rosaura's rich friend.) Senora Ines sees Rosaura as another low class "peasant" to work for her. She has Rosaura serve Luciana's rich friends by giving them hot dogs, orange juice, and cake. Senora Ines fails to see Rosaura as an equal even though Rosaura is smart. (It says in the book that Rosaura is in the top of her class.) This book is trying to say that we need to look past net worth, and stock options, and see what is really inside of a person before we judge them.

My favorite book of 2013 was "Looking for Alaska." "Looking for Alaska" is about a boy names Miles who goes to boarding school for his Junior year of high school. He becomes close friends with three other juniors named the Colonel, Takumi, and Alaska. They go on several adventures until half way through the book Alaska dies. The remainder of the book is about Miles ans the Colonel trying to figure out why Alaska died.

I really enjoyed "looking for Alaska" because of the characters and their interactions. John Green clearly spent a long time developing the characters before he started writing. The evolve through out the book and their interactions evolve along with them. The dialogue is smart and fun. The setting and description really tie the book together. The whole book was well planed and well written.