The S sounds ffs

I'm sure this is a great book.

But the narrator provinces their S sounds waaay too powerfully. So much so that it hurts to listen to 🙁

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A Prescient Tale

A Prescient Tale

The first few chapters needed perseverance but this original novel then flowed with the growth of the principal characters and the acutely relevant Orwellian themes.
Absolutely worth a listen, while we still have the time ...😉 and the accounts of Mae’s frenzied media activity were hilarious and not to be missed.

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loved this story

I initially watched the film, loved it, thought the book would be good aswell, well I was wrong......
it was amazing. the ending is way better than the film

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1 person found this helpful

Thought provoking

I would like to listen to this again sometime and see if I can spot the moment where the logical argument is taken one step too far and madness begins. Maybe we all need to keep our whits about us in the real world too!

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Quality read, though lengthy

Would you consider the audio edition of The Circle to be better than the print version?

I've not read the print version.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I found it funny and amusing, albeit bit of a scary thought, modern day take on a Brave New World concept - though many things you see happening around you mentioned in the book. Enjoyable read.

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Okay, not great

I didn't like the narrator's voice. The story was quite heavy handed story as an allegory.

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A very clunky novel

Clunky, in the sense that 1984 and Atlas Shrugged are clunky, this is a plodding novel tackling sociology and economics in the digital age. I read it in this spirit - as a discussion of the dilemmas we face with big data and social networks: the advantages of transparency Vs privacy and identifiability Vs anonymity, forcing social responsibility and conformity against the individual's 'right' to stay apart, unmonitored and anti-social. To my mind I ended up more in favour of transparency and forced identification; Eggers seems to land few punches in favour of anonymity, despite trying to warn of some dystopian, digital future.

Clunky means the characters are made of cardboard and there is virtually no plot. People behave in unlikely ways and believe unlikely things (in my experience, people are much less easy to lead by the nose than Eggers thinks). Eggers also makes the classic errors of a man narrating as a woman: his heroine, May, enjoys, and is keen to repeat, perfunctory (but hugely satisfying) sex in a toilet with a strange man who has failed to give her his name (and turns out to be... oh, I shouldn't spoil things, should I? ). The only clothes described are when May is 'wearing a red silk blouse and black skirt'. Dave, either do some research into how women think or narrate as a man.

Narration. Professional, appropriately Californian.

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10 people found this helpful

Brilliant story, outstanding narration.

Simply to say the story is very cleverly written, with plenty of pace, drama and unexpected twists and turns. It also sheds disturbing light on what technologists may intend for good - but in the hands of ambitious, yet ultimately misguided people, may turn into a human nightmare.

The narrator does a simply outstanding job, and if there was an international award, I would certainly nominate him for it! In Audible terms, I found the whole thing "un-put-downable"! Fabulous.

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1 person found this helpful

Review

Would you consider the audio edition of The Circle to be better than the print version?

I haven't read the print version

Who was your favorite character and why?

Hard to say

What does Dion Graham bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

No idea, not read the book

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

No idea, sorry

Any additional comments?

Compelling story - felt prescient rather than fiction!

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Thought provoking.

Slow to begin with but a beginning that really set the characters and ideas behind the story. It was a very thought provoking listen that I found hard not to listen to whenever I could.

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