Books for the Extremely Online

Nearly a decade old now, The Circle feels like a book from a bygone era, back before Facebook became Meta, back before Facebook bought Instagram, back before we succumbed fully to the almighty algorithm, no longer caring that the ads in our social media feeds seemed capable of reading our minds. Now, it’s too late to go back. But back then, when Eggers wrote The Circle, it all felt slightly less inevitable. In this dystopian tale, a recent college graduate lands a job at a powerful tech company, where she quickly climbs the corporate ladder. But the company’s push for full transparency across the world begins to feel ever more intrusive and, well, just plain creepy. Will our protagonist realize things have gone too far — or is it too late for her?

It’s hard to root for anyone in this supernatural thriller but, at the same time, it’s also hard to look away. The protagonist of Ghoster leaves her life behind in order to move in with her new boyfriend, only to find upon her arrival that he’s disappeared and that his flat has been emptied… except for his mobile phone. Naturally, she hacks into his phone and scours his social media feeds and his photo library to find out what the hell is going on. But the more focused she becomes on digging into his life, the more things seem to spiral out of her control. She could totally walk away — but will she?

The premise of this YA novel isn’t exactly light — the young woman behind an internet clean-up business is tasked with taking down a revenge porn site — but the young woman in question is a high school junior, the victims who hired her are fellow students, and the whole book gives major Veronica Mars vibes. At a time when it seems frustratingly impossible to fight back against the online harassment that has proliferated across the internet, it feels satisfying to see someone go head-to-head with the perpetrators of such heinous crimes.

A brilliant coder and a spiritual seeker fall in love, get married, and go into business together, developing a social media app that creates meaningful rituals for its users. Can their marriage survive what comes next? This book is a delicious skewering of startup culture and of the patriarchy, and an exploration of the things we build our lives around and the things upon which we impart meaning. Perhaps the most disturbing part of the whole read is that, after I finished the last page, I was like, Yes. Could someone please point me toward an app that tells me how to bring meaning to my life at a time when I just feel exhausted and directionless all the time? Clearly, I learned nothing.