Noteworthy paperbacks

By MIGUEL SALAZAR

A selection of summaries from The New York Times Book Review:

SUPERBLOOM: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, by Nicholas Carr. (Norton. 272 pages. $19.99.) “Social media is not successful because it goes against our instincts and desires,” Carr writes. “It’s successful because it gives us what we want.” His jeremiad lays some blame with tech companies that feed us digital junk food and draw us deeper into our feeds by pushing content that whips up strong emotions, while probing our own capacity for vanity, resentment and cruelty when left to our devices.

THE COMPOUND, by Aisling Rawle. (Random House. 304 pages. $18.) When Lily arrives at a mansion in the middle of a desert to participate in a reality show, she knows what to expect: flirting, intrigue and a fight for rewards from the basic — sunscreen — to the luxurious. What she encounters is a world of strategists and backstabbers, one in which warped ethics are the norm and tenuous relationships are rendered in the full-throttle pace of Rawle’s layered debut.

DEEP HOUSE: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told, by Jeremy Atherton Lin. (Back Bay. 416 pages. $19.99.) Lin, the author of “Gay Bar,” plumbs his own relationship with a British partner as he explores the difficulties faced by transnational queer couples in America before marriage equality. While “Gay Bar” prowled through clubs with thrill-seeking horniness, Juan A. Ramírez wrote in his review, this account, a survey of legal flash points over gay rights and immigration, “is denser and written from a quieter space of contemplation.”