Iâm a novelist who draws inspiration from my work experience as both a journalist covering tech platforms and a lawyer advising clients on tech transactions. It fascinates me how the internet has become ubiquitous in our lives, and yet it appears so rarely in popular fiction. My high school English teachers taught me that we donât read just for escapism but to better understand the full range of human experience. Given how deeply technology shapes todayâs moral problems, I believe fiction should address these issues head-on. Iâm excited to share this list of books that depict how the internet is affecting usâfor better and for worse.
I was blown away by this book, which beautifully captures the fragmented, jarring experience of being âExtremely Online.â The reader sees the world through the protagonistâs eyes as she scrolls, argues with strangers, and experiences the constant pressure to generate hot takesâespecially once an absurd tweet propels her to celebrity.
The book conveys the tension between online interactions (ephemeral, yes, but not necessarily lacking in genuine human emotion) and serious offline issues, like the family tragedy that finally pulls the main character away from the digital fray. I laughed out loud at the over-sharing and performative virtue signaling in the Reddit-like Portal. Havenât we all encountered âthat guyâ online?
'Patricia Lockwood is the voice of a generation' Namita Gokhale
'A masterpiece' Guardian
'I really admire and love this book' Sally Rooney
'An intellectual and emotional rollercoaster' Daily Mail
'I can't remember the last time I laughed so much reading a book' David Sedaris
'A rare wonder . . . I was left in bits' Douglas Stuart
* WINNER OF THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2022 *
* SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 *
* SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021 *
* A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK *
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This book resonated with me on so many levels. I first read it in 2015 while working at a tech company, and the novel gave me the language to express the unease I felt about Big Techâs relentless push for âtransparencyâ and âsharing,â often at the expense of privacy. In many ways, the book is an argument about trade-offsâthe perks of working for a Google-like company versus the torture of being overly connected.
Eggers also offers one of the most accurate portrayals of life as a Silicon Valley tech worker. The overwhelming barrage of pings and constant demands for feedback felt all too familiar. Ultimately, it is both a compelling dystopian thriller and a thought-provoking critique of the tech-driven world we inhabit, raising critical questions about privacy and the cost of innovation.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE starring Tom Hanks, Emma Watson and John Boyega
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - a dark, thrilling and unputdownable novel about our obsession with the internet
'Prepare to be addicted' Daily Mail
'A gripping and highly unsettling read' Sunday Times
'The Circle is 'Brave New World' for our brave new world... Fast, witty and troubling' Washington Post
When Mae is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. Run out of a sprawling California campus, the Circle links users' personal emails,âŚ
Set against the backdrop of the flourishing musical community during the 1940s in Baltimore, Notes of Love and War weaves together the pleasure of musical performance with the dangers of espionage and spying.
Audrey Harper needs more than home and hearth to satisfy her self-worth. Working as a music criticâŚ
While this book doesnât depict todayâs internet culture directly, itâs easy to imagine a dystopian future where most people spend their lives in a virtual reality world like the Oasis. As the main character navigates the challenges of this massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), he encounters dilemmas that resonate with todayâs internet users: Can you truly trust someone youâve only met online? How do you compete when others have far more resources?
Though the book is geared toward a young adult audience, its themes hit home for readers of all ages. Iâm glad we have stories showing that tech isnât always a neutral force in society and that retreating into an online space doesnât solve the larger systemic problems in the world.
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG
It's the year 2044, and the real world has become an ugly place. We're out of oil. We've wrecked the climate. Famine, poverty, and disease are widespread.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes this depressing reality by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia where you can be anything you want to be, where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. And like most of humanity, Wade is obsessed by the ultimate lottery ticket thatâŚ
What I loved about this book is how beautifully it describes even the mundane details of interacting with the internetâthe seconds of delay before your email inbox loads, the microburst of gratification when your tweet gets retweeted. The story follows the main character as he spends the morning procrastinating on his novel, constantly pulled away by Facebook and various internet distractions.
Be aware that this book has elements of auto-fiction and âwriting about writing,â which isnât everyoneâs cup of tea, though I found it refreshing. The author brings to life highly relatable experiencesâlike scrolling through social media on the toilet. The scene itself is all too real, though very rarely portrayed in literature.
"Brisk and shockingly witty, exuberantly scatological as well as deeply wise, The Novelist is a delight. Jordan Castro is a rare new talent: an author highly attuned to the traditions he is working within while also offering a refreshingly fun sendup of life beset by the endless scroll."âMary South, author of You Will Never Be Forgotten
In Jordan Castroâs inventive, funny, and surprisingly tender first novel, we follow a young man over the course of a single morning as he tries and fails to write an autobiographical novel, finding himself instead drawn into the infinite spaces of Twitter, quotidian rituals,âŚ
This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year searchâŚ
This book finally offers representation to the weird and wonderful world of internet fandoms. We all know someone who is passionate about a niche interest, and this book focuses on characters who really love trains and comic books.
The protagonist, Kate, works for the Subconscious Agency, an organization that helps drum up enthusiasm for their clients by interacting with super fans on message boards. I especially enjoyed the plot point where the characters track down an internet troll by noticing some breadcrumbs that he left on his Wikipedia page.
Fair warning: This book might inspire some nostalgia for an era when text-based sites like Reddit had much more sway than the short-form videos dominating todayâs platforms.
kmac1987 is sneaking through a fence with a group of strangers to catch a glimpse of new train on the Washington Metro. Kate Berkowitz and a movie star are making jokes online about a fifty-year-old soap opera comic strip. kmac1987 and Kate Berkowitz are the same person, and her job is to get you excited about her clients without you noticing that she's doing it. Kate loves her job. She's a professional enthusiast. But it's about to get complicated.
My book is a fast-paced techno-thriller following freelance journalist Morgan Wentworth as she investigates a hacker attack at the user conference for Infopendiumâthe worldâs famous crowdsourced internet encyclopedia. What begins as a routine assignment spirals into a high-stakes investigation into this internet subculture.
In a world where those who edit the facts wield immense power, this book explores the darker side of platform manipulation and the heroes fighting to protect information integrity. With themes of information warfare and the ever-shifting nature of truth, this novel poses a pressing question: Who controls the narrative in an age governed by online sources, and what lengths will they go to defend it?
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorâand only womanâon a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
Fall 2028. Mickey Cooper, an elderly homeless man, receives an incredible proposition from a rogue pharmaceutical company: âBe our secret guinea pig for our new drug, and weâll pay you life-changing money, which youâll be able to enjoy because if (cough) when the treatment works, two months from now yourâŚ