Feed

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to totally suck.” And so starts “Feed." I love the first line of this book. It’s the main reason I picked up this book in the first place, but the novel as a whole didn’t have enough to keep it.

Plot in a tweet:
Finally, we can chat,

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shop, etc. by using our brains. Rad! Or is it? #Feed

I was actually thinking about stopping the book after a couple chapters. The storyline was just OK. The characters were annoying. I couldn’t stand some of the slang they were using.
I know it is set in the future and I know that language will change, but it seemed like Anderson just picked a couple words to use like every couple of like words. It was like meg difficult to like read at first.

I kept going though. I think that “Feed” is set in a very interesting world. I kind of felt cheated with that though. The author would mention black areas or rumble or something, but then would never talk about how that came to be, etc. I would have liked to know more about what lead us down this path. Not a ton, but hints of it would have been nice.

Instead of this book, read “Knife of Never Letting Go.” You’ll thank me.

Name I hated: Quendy

Favorite exchange:
“Maybe these are just our salad days.”
“Huh?”
“You know. Happy.”
“What’s happy about a salad?”
She shrugged. “Ranch,” she said.

Prison sentence: A day. (I think I just wanted to finish it.)

Final word: “Meh.”

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My Summary: I can't really summarize this book that much without giving away a big part of the novel, so I'm gunna keep this short and sweet. Titus is just your average American teen (in the future, mind you!). He's rich, because everyone is, and he relies on his feed to do everything for him:

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shop, control body functions, read, and even think. Titus is completely happy with his life, but he's a little lonely.

When his friends decide to go off to the moon for the weekend (the equivalent of going to Niagara Falls or Vegas, I think) he goes along, hoping something exciting will happen, or that he'll meet someone. The moon turns out to suck (as stated above by Titus himself) but he does meet someone: Violet, a pretty girl who's a little quirky. Titus and his friends invite her to go to a dance with them later on, and she agrees.

Hoping for a night of fun, everyone is extremely pissed when their feeds get hacked; they all black out and wake up in the hospital some time later. From then on, things just keep getting weirder... but only Violet and Titus seem to notice anything's going on...
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My Thoughts: Be prepared, because I'm gunna be rambling on for a while! :P

Ok, I'm gunna be completely honest with you guys: I bought this book sometime last June, right before summer break - it was recommended to me by a few people, and I picked it up because it seemed different. Like, A LOT different. I usually don't read dystopian or futuristic stuff (not counting The Hunger Games and Matched, of course, but those are different) but like I said, I got a bunch of recommendations for this one, so I decided to give it a try.

Then, a few days later, I bought a bunch more books, and Feed just kept getting pushed back on my TBR list. Months passed, until finally, last Monday, I realized it was the only book in my possession that I hadn't opened up yet. I pulled it off the shelf, brushed off the dust (just kidding!) and started to read.

About 2 pages in, I realized I was gunna have trouble with this one, because the main character spoke in futuristic slang and the first sentence mentioned kids deciding to go to the moon for a weekend (my first reaction: "huh?!"). I got through a few pages without giving up, fully prepared to hate the book and donate it to my local library or something. Then, the day before yesterday, I grabbed it on my way out the door, thinking I'd drop it off at the library on my way home from my exam.

I finished my exam early, so my teacher told me I had to amuse myself for an hour. Unprepared, I pulled out the only thing I had with me - the book - thinking I could pretend to read while I checked twitter for updates.

Needless to say, I never checked twitter. I started reading where I'd left off, getting so engrossed in the story that I didn't even look up when my teacher told me I could leave if I wanted. I read until I reached Part 2, then put my bookmark in and left, anxious to get home and keep going.

This book did not disappoint. I ended up finishing it late last night (exams kept me from reading it all in one sitting) and I gotta say, I bawled at the ending. I wanted to reach into the book and give the characters a big hug (of course, that isn't physically possible...)! And Violet... To the people who have read it already: is it weird that I felt like I could really relate to her character?

Anyways, my previous notions about this novel aside, I thought it was an accurate representation of the materialism of our society. Just like today, in the novel, things are going on all around the characters, and nobody really seems to notice what's happening. The symbolism was great, too, and I loved the little snippets at the beginning of each chapter!

Final Thoughts: This book was definitely worth the time and the money! I'm so glad I tried reading it again, or else I would've missed out on something quite awesome indeed. Once I figured out the slang (meg = really, unit = dude) which didn't take that long anyway, I really got into it. I'm sure you will too!

Favourite Quote: "Then you're walking around alone. You know, there's this weird moment where you realize that you're alone, and no one else has been walking for a while. You realize that the moment, the exact moment, when you became alone is already over. You've been that way for a while."

"That's it. That's exactly it."

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Titus is a young man of the future – a teenage who goes to the moon with his friends just to have fun. While there, he is smitten by two individuals. The first is a beautiful young girl by the name of Violet to whom he is very attracted. The second is a crazy man who whacks him and disrupts his

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feed – a computer implant that advertises directly and constantly to his brain.

This book is hilarious! Although primarily written for teenagers, I found very much to enjoy and laugh at – including the riotous teenage jargon, biting satire about corporations and media, and parents’ relationships with their children. This is just the kind of book that is so entertaining I’ll want to foist it on all the young people I know and like.

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In the dystopian future, everyone will have a direct feed in their head that connects them to the internet and all media. M.T. Anderson takes the current 24-hour connection lifestyle and pushes it to it's furthest limits to explore how much of us is ourselves, and how much of us is what the media

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sells us. For a young adult novel, some very mature themes are explored, but in a completely fascinating way.

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Feed is based in a futuristic world where most American people have their brains directly wired to the internet. Unfortunately, I found Anderson’s exposition to be lacking. The book is quick to point out the dangers of extreme commercialism and advertising, but does not examine any advantages to

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the feed system that would make it apparently attractive, or even genuinely beneficial in an ideal world. The wholly manipulative feed seems to have been set in place by bullying, peer pressure and marketing alone.

Furthermore, since the feed discourages independent thought, the narrator is painful to listen to. You’ll need patience to get through his bubble-headed babble, even if he does occasionally show more originality than the average bubble-head. On the positive side, Anderson’s exploration of Violet’s terminal illness is well done, and made me care enough to be angry.

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This is where I eat my words.I resisted Feed. It was recommended to me by several close friends, but I put off reading it and put off reading it for what I now realize were fairly shallow reasons--first, that it looked like such a boy book, and, secondly, because I feared that this would be like

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Uglies: filled with grating slang and the glittering veneer of SF conceits but without any substance beneath them.I was so, so wrong. Because Feed wasn't anything like Westerfeld's more recent dystopian series. Instead, it hearkens back to earlier, more substantial speculative fiction aimed at adults--there are shades of A Clockwork Orange here, but mostly I couldn't help but think of Philip K. Dick. Anderson's future world gleams with a Dick-like intensity; it is well-rendered and foreign and yet utterly recognizable, but more importantly, and again as is the case in many of Dick's novels, the emotional core of the book is what makes it transcendent.At first, as is the case with Uglies, it's the technology of Feed that stands out: set in a far future where humans live in domed enclosures and have internet advertising, called Feeds, zapped into their heads, it's the story of Titus, a teenage boy who was never taught to question the world around him--or the one inside his skull. On the moon, Titus encounters Violet, a pretty, slightly unusual girl, and takes her to a club where both of their feeds are hacked. This is a minor inconvenience to Titus, but has terrible side-effects for Violet, leading her down a long road toward her eventual death.The setting here is much more textured than the above probably implies--this isn't a clean utopia, but rather a commercial empire built upon the death of our planet and humanity. Hints of this texture are given early on, in the earliest references to the mysterious lesions that have begun to plague teenagers. But as the novel proceeds, the reader begins to learn precisely how diseased the planet, and human society, truly is, in fits and starts and stolen glimpses. Anderson doesn't condescend to his audience by stating the cause for all of this decay explicitly, but there's enough here that it's clear and implicit.In a way, Feed is really a treatise on grief--Titus' grief for the still-living Violet as she declines, the grief of both Violet and her father for all of their world--and an examination of how commercial society offers insufficient comfort in the face of death. It's not insignificant that, when discussing things she would like to do in her short life, the only dream Violet can conjure that doesn't come from a sitcom opening is visiting the sacrificial grounds of Mayan temples. The commercial society of Feed has no vocabulary for sacrifice, for horror, or for death.This was truly a challenging, beautiful read, and I'd highly recommend it, not only for young readers, but for anyone interested in layered, complex science fiction.

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Have you ever thought that our world was going a little overboard with technology? If you have, then wait until you step into the futuristic world of Feed’s protagonist, Titus.
Titus is your average American boy; he’s living life and not thinking much of it. He uses his feed just as much as

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anyone else, whether it’s to read, write, shop or chat, he’s using his feed all the time. A “feed” is like a little computer implanted into a person’s brain. Titus depends on his feed for everything, that is until he meets Violet. Violet realizes what has happened to the world and what is happening to her. Violet questions the feed.
Feed is an extremely deep book about the future. The author did an exquisite job making a story about an issue that concerns millions of people throughout the world. It really is scary to think about how much computers do for us today. Electronics are doing more and more thinking for humans every day, will we ever let it go as far as having them implanted into our brains?
Although I really liked Feed it had its share of flaws. One was that the characters used a slang that took a long time to get used to. The characters also said the word “like” about ten times per page. The other drawback to feed was its climax seemed to come too early, so that for the rest of the book I was expecting a bigger event, but it never came.
Feed was an amazing book, but I think only a select group of readers would enjoy reading it. If you have read and enjoyed other dystopian books then you may be one of those who would really enjoy the experience of reading Feed.

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Imagine having an internet feed streaming right into your head at all times. All your favorite music, shopping, blogs, news, information, all accessed at a thought. This is the world that exists, and if you're not in the feed, you can't function within the world. This is a disturbing look at a

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future version of us that has become overwhelmed by consumerism and technology, and the effects of what can happen if something goes wrong.
While this book has lessons to learn, and it is an easy read, the storyline is only a snapshot of what could be a greater novel, and I found that dis-satisfying. It's a decent read, and a good idea, but not in my top list of favorites.

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I hated this book and probably wouldn't have finished it if it hadn't been for a book club. I had been looking forward to reading it, too, because it sounded like the kind of book I usually like. It has an interesting concept--in a futuristic America, people have computers wired into their

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brains--and an important message, but a concept and a message just can't take the place of a good story. It also didn't help that the author seems to have a completely negative view of humanity in general, so this was a pretty depressing read.

I would recommend Devil on My Back by Monica Hughes as an alternative to this book.

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“…It’s like a spiral: They keep making everything more basic so it will appeal to everyone. And gradually, everyone gets used to everything being basic, so we get less and less varied as people, more simple. So the corps make everything even simpler. And it goes on and on.”

Titus starts his

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spring break off like most kids: a trip to the moon. While he plans on having a good time, he doesn’t plan on meeting Violet, altering the course of his simple teenage life. It is commonplace in this society to have installed in the brain and be connected to the feed. Tracking purchases, videos watched, music listened to, and general lifestyle choices, the feed analyzes everyone’s personality to further the consumerism agenda of American life, even though most people with the feed implant grow skin lesions at an alarming rate. Titus has grown up with the feed, yet Violet has not. This allows her to bring a completely different perspective on life to Titus and his friends; however, they aren’t so jive with her interpretations of the world.

Reading Feed for a second time 10 years after the first really brought to light many new discoveries, like the fact that Clouds and School are now trademarked by corporations. With the rise of social media and online companies in current society, it’s creepy how close we are with the concepts of this novel being 100% accurate. Companies are able to suggest things we might like based on our purchases, we can chat people not just with phones but with watches now, and “improved” products are being promoted now more than ever to increase consumerism and the idea of “keeping up with the Jones.” One of my favorite quotes is when Violet says, “Because of the feed, we’re raising a nation of idiots. Ignorant, self-centered idiots.” While there is still hope for our future, this is becoming more true with every passing day. As with George Orwell’s 1984 (which this book always reminds me of), it is a scary reminder of what our world could become if we don’t put forth the effort to maintain our integrity.

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This book opens up into a utopian society in which the media is a part of everyone's lives as much as air and water. We follow the lives of a small group of friends as they struggle with "the feed" and rebel against its power over their minds. As though the reader is a part of the group, s/he is

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able to speak the language of the society, heavily laden with technological slang. As the feed eventually wins the battle and takes the main character's love interest, I grew frustrated with the lack of depth in the main character's relationships with other characters. I think that this book is a unique way to consider the role of media in a society, however, it is harder to grasp onto the characters in the novel in order to view any of them as someone the reader could relate to or call a loveable protagonist in the story.

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A future where an entire network is part of you - the titular feed is a network hardwired into the brain that you can access at anytime for information, to chat with friends, to simulate test-drives of new cars, buy new clothes or to play the latest games. It's great groundwork, right? Here,

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Anderson doesn't lecture. Instead does a fantastic job of countering any novelty or fun factor by showing us everything that has been compromised to protect the life of the feed. We immediately find that learning is no longer a necessity and is instead replaced with "school" that is merely an extended users manual that continually teaches one how to better use their feeds not to create or think but to consume. Adults are behaviorally indistinct from their children. Lip service is given to the idea of being able to access all manner of knowledge, but this behavior is rarely observed. Subversive hacks designed to make the masses rebel are quickly reformatted into ads to sell riot-gear from items like The Kent State Collection and it is seamless. Everyone in the feed has the goal of being the perfect, all-consuming user whether they realize it or not.

This setup ultimately creates a difficult path for the story. Don't get me wrong, when a hacker and an attempt to resist the feed (or at least question it mightily) leads to actual questions with real consequences. The situations have depth and range, but they all have the same problem: feed-addled characters that will only register so much empathy. It doesn't ruin the story, but it keeps everything distant. As a character, this is understandable. As a reader that had glimpses of an active rebellion and hackers at the very beginning, I wanted to know why I was stuck with the plastic party people (who are all nice enough) and never got to hear about what those really railing against the system were really doing. I do hope that Anderson takes the time to write that story someday.

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I realize that it's odd to give a book's writing such a low score while rating it highly in terms of teen appeal. A bit of an explanation: I originally read this book when I was 14, and I loved it. I had discovered dystopia in literature the year before, reading A Clockwork Orange and 1984, and I

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was excited to read a then-new dystopia. I was very critical of mainstream culture. I was enthralled with a book that was so out there, that was angry about the same things about which I was angry.

However, in retrospect, Feed doesn't read well. I'm bewildered that when I first read it I didn't think it was heavy-handed or patronizing, focusing more on allegory than on fleshing out the setting, time, and characters. I am also surprised that I didn't pick up on the ways in which it distinguishes itself as dystopian science fiction as poor attempts at similar tactics used to greater effect by writers such as Burgess and Orwell.

That said, I think that teens would still be interested in the world that Anderson creates, especially teenagers who struggle to find anything relatable in a frequently vapid popular culture that tries to sell to teenagers rather than to understand them. Younger readers might be less likely to question Anderson's decision not to elaborate on the logistics of his futuristic society, content to enjoy the satire in scenes such as the filet mignon farm or the trip to the moon.

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I'm trying to get a fix on why like I didn't, you know, like this thing, this book too much. Everyone says its meg brag but it just felt maybe a little disconnected like the time when I went a whole day without checking facebook? And then when I checked nothing had really happened and nobody had

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messaged me and I was going all like "What nobody messaged me" and then my friends were all like "What we would've messaged you but you didn't message us" and everyone was wondering why I was going all mal over it...

When my ex-wife and I first started dating, she made me dinner one night using her grandmother's macaroni and cheese recipe. The recipe called for 3 tablespoons of flour; my ex-wife put in 3 cups. This book is kind of like that: It has the right ingredients, but not in the right proportions. I wanted to like it right from the beginning, I really did. But ultimately, it never quite rises above its own cleverness. "OMG people aren't paying attention to IMPORTANT things! The world is DOOMED and we're doing it to ourselves!" It's basically 300 pages of old-codgery-ness disguised in made-up young'un's speak.

Feed presents a world in which people are bombarded with advertisements and consumed with consumerism, while they ignore the various social, political and environmental situations going on around them. Part of the problem is that such a view does not extrapolate the current situation of social feeds in any meaningful, or in my opinion accurate, way. For goodness's sake, I can hardly look at Facebook, Twitter, Feedly or LinkedIn (or even Goodreads) without being reminded of the many — often conflicting — social, political and environmental situations that everyone else wants me to be concerned about. To be ignorant of them, I have to ignore my feeds.

Also, I'm not sure that the problem of ignorance about world problems is unique to technological advancement. When I went to high school in the early 90s, I certainly didn't have the constant social feeds available today, let alone the constant brainstream of the characters in Feed — yet I am fairly certain I was at least as ignorant of world events in my time as Titus is in the story. And I probably was better informed than most people throughout most of history who, lets face it, rarely give much of a crap about what's going on outside of their immediate social circle regardless of what level of technology they have.

Finally, there's some shock-value stereotypes that don't work for me. Trademarking Clouds™ and School™ is a hootenanny and gives a bit of the OMG THE CORPORATIONS ARE RAISING OUR KIDS AND CONTROLLING OUR AIR! freakout, until you realize that any corporation worth it's salt would register the trademarks instead of relying on the state-level common law protection of a TM. And of course Violet is homeschooled by an eccentric, jilted father rather than a "normal" dad in a stable relationship, because of course only weirdos want to homeschool their kids. The PR guy spinning the use of the word "shithead" seems bizarre even for a politician — and I write this on a day when a guy named Weiner is trying to explain away erotic indiscretions he made via social media so that he can be the mayor of the largest city in the country.

So, while this book has a few interesting moments and potential for some real insight, it ultimately fails to deliver. On to the next one.

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M.T. Anderson has crafted an unforgettable, chilling satire of a futuristic world where vacations are spent on other planets or their moons, cars fly themselves on autopilot, and the internet, television, and texting are all part of the 'feed' placed inside your head. There is no need for

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traditional school since you can use the feed for educational things like, "looking up the battles George Washington was in back in the Civil War or whatever." The Feed is uber-commercialized and personalized, sending instant commercials to a person based on their thoughts, emotions, or surroundings. Given the technology and information available to them, as well as the world-- galaxy, rather-- at their fingertips, what else is there to do but party and be total idiots?
Like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Feed examines a not-so-unimaginable reality and questions a consumer culture that lacks purpose, emotion, or even a soul. This is a highly recommended book, and on my must-reads list.

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My VOYA: 5Q, 4P

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."

Titus and his friends are products of the Feed: a never-ending stream of advertising and information implanted into their brains. During an ordinary trip to the Moon, Titus meets the smart, beautiful

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Violet. When a protester hacks their minds, the teens lose contact with the Feed and learn that there may be a better way to live.

As unsettling and soul-scarring as Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Feed is one of those novels that will grow in your subconscious long after you've finished it. Titus is as self-absorbed as Holden Caulfield, but far less articulate. Titus's dystopia is much more Brave New World than 1984, where the affluent are lulled into lives of mindless consumption. Hairstyles change within hours, the oozing lesions everyone has developed become a fashion statement, and School is a trademark, not a place.

Stray observations:

• The pulsing red fields of filet mignon that Titus thinks are part of nature have never quite left my psyche. *Queasiness*


• TV show from the Feed: Oh? Wow! Thing!
  


• Song lyrics for a love song from the Feed: I like you so bad / And you like me so bad. / We are so bad / It would be bad / If we did not get together, baby, / Bad baby, / Bad, bad baby. / Meg bad.
  


• "That's one of the great things about the feed - that you can be supersmart without ever working. Everyone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in and sh*t." - 47


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Titus and his friends are bored so they decide to spend their break on the moon, which isn't as great as it sounds. After they land their feeds, basically the internet hardwired into their brains, is slammed with adds for hotels and things to do. They end up at an anti-gravity club, but even that

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seems boring until Titus meets Violet who is unlike anyone he has ever met.

When Titus, his friends and Violet have their feeds corrupted it sets in motion a series of events that leads Titus to question his "jacked in" life.

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On the face of it, Feed has all the elements of sci fi that keep me willfully away from the genre: its characters travel through tubes in "up cars", they live in pods where they are able to regulate daytime and nighttime hours, and they are created in "conceptariums" where their parents get to

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choose physical traits for them. My instinct is to shove such books aside, preferring my fiction in the "real" world which is endlessly fascinating. My daughter argues that the best sci fi is rooted in reality and offers cautionary tales about the future. Feed does that. It's a fantastic book in every sense of the word.

Titus and his friends are privileged teens who take a weekend trip to the moon - which is now the US's 51st state. He meets and is attracted to Violet, who isn't like the other girls: they go to the ladies room every few minutes to change their looks depending on the new styles that suddenly pop up, literally, in their heads. This is the Feed, a barrage of ads and information that most of the population receives via an implant at birth. Violet's family doesn't have a lot of money and she received her implant when she was seven, making her a misfit. She knows how to read and write, which most teens have no need for, and she questions what is happening to the world and where it's going. When an old "hacker" attacks the kids at a bar, their Feeds are damaged and they end up at the hospital where, without the Feed to guide them, they are incapable of much conversation. Violet engages Titus and while he is undeniably attracted to her, he is uncomfortably drawn into the world outside his own head.

Kids who are aware that the websites they frequently visit have pop-up ads that conform to their interests will recognize what the Feed is all about. Instead of reading these messages, this future promises they'll be ever present via the pictures and voices in their heads, geared to their whims and fantasies. These teens are encouraged to tune into the popular inane teen show "Oh? Wow! Thing!" and sales at their favorite store - hilariously named "Wetherbee and Crotch" - are constantly offered. They order the stuff through what's left of their minds, which isn't much since their speech is restricted to identifiable slang: "like", "he goes", "he's all" are the words most frequently used. When telling a story, Titus often trails into: "So, I was all, like, ta-da-ta-da-ta-da..." when he can't express an emotion. The power of this story is that this is all so plausible: it doesn't seem such a huge step from ever-present earbuds and addictions to twitter and iphones to the blasting of messages directly into the brain.

Anderson is brilliant in creating his own slang: "unit" replaces "dude"; "brag" stands in for "cool"; "mal" (for malfunction) is "wasted", achieved by hacking into restricted sites that mess with the brain. The adults are as vapid as the kids and no wonder: government has surrendered the schools to the corporations that control the Feed, creating "School, Inc." where the kids learn how to better use the Feed.

When Violet's Feed cannot be repaired she becomes more of a rebel. Amid the messages, the Feed also lets in occasional snippets of news about the world, which is polluted and in upheaval against the US. The general populace ignores these and Titus is uncomfortable about his girlfriend's failing health and her insistence that he pay attention to the insidiousness of the Feed, the world's crisis and her own. His reactions to these serious events are those of a typical teenager: he strenuously immerses himself in the comforts of his own world. But it may be too late: his immature mind has been awakened and for the first time he may be required to actually think.

This audio book was a truly outstanding production. David Aaron Baker is remarkable: his narration of the inarticulate Titus and his friends is completely believable - this is valley speak taken to the nth degree and not an easy thing to do - and each character has a unique voice. Four other actors provide the insistently manic, cheery voices of the Feed which comes in a higher volume, like our TV commercials. They come at the end of each chapter, giving the reader an idea of the propaganda the characters are constantly being fed. When the kids "chat" to each other - sending messages with their minds that no one else can hear - Baker's voices are digitally altered to reflect this.

The irony that I listened to Feed rather than read the print edition doesn't escape me. The book is great either way but this is one book that truly benefits from audio and I was delighted to have had the experience.

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Holy wow, this was an awesome audiobook.

(Summary paraphrased from jacket copy) Titus is a teenager whose ability to read, write, and even think for himself has been almost completely obliterated by his "feed", a transmitter implanted directly into his brain. But then Titus meets Violet, a girl who

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cares about what's happening to the world and challenges everything Titus and his friends hold dear. A girl who decides to fight the feed.

So, besides being a completely awesome and intense and well-written book, this is one of the best audiobooks I've ever listened to. Narrator David Aaron Baker gives each character a distinct voice and he totally gets the cadence of teen speech. The production is great, too. There's a slight echo effect to indicate when characters are "chatting" each other (talking using the feed instead of their voice) and the story is periodically interrupted by commercials just like you're listening to the actual feed.

Highly HIGHLY recommended for high schoolers and adults. (Fair warning: there is a fair amount of foul language.)

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Finished in one sitting, could not put this book down. The portrayal of a future American culture obsessed with consumerism, enabled by super efficient marketing techniques, is too real to be ignored. It is difficult to see the difference between adults and teenagers, both make frequent use of

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coarse language and appear to have a limited ability to see beyond the 'now.'

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You will immediately be hooked by the story's voice and language. M. T. Anderson is spot on in his point-of-view portrayal of how teenagers in the somewhat distant future will talk and interact with each other. At least, it's how we would imagine teenagers to behave. His prose could too easily turn

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corny and campy, but he strikes that perfect delicate balance in every chapter.

The feed itself, as I understand it, is like having a super-sophisticated smart phone fused in your brain. Humans through the decades have gotten used to having more and more streams of information wired directly into their consciousness. It's mind-boggling how much information these characters are processing in real time that it took me a few chapters to appreciate the scope.

I didn't enjoy very much one of Anderson's other novels (Octavian Nothing), but now I feel compelled to explore his other works. This book is brilliant.

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M.T. Anderson created a futuristic world of teenage apathy and consumerism with Feed that is intriguing, yet at times can be off-putting. Intriguing, and down right frightening, is the thought that Anderson’s vision of a future where humans have a direct internet-like “feed” inputted directly

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into their brains, where faceless corporations are apathetic towards individuals unless they’ve bought their goods, and humans are literally rotting away on a dead, polluted planet, can actually occur. Off-putting is Anderson’s narration which is, like, patronizing, for its all like, we did this, and then, like this happened, and da da da, a question mark appears at, like, the end of what likes reads like a statement? If you found that sentence even slightly annoying, imagine entire paragraphs in that style, then you’d be prepared for what Anderson delivers. Also, Anderson creates his own slang words, like “youch”, yet still insisted on overusing the four-letter “f” word. If reader’s can get beyond these verbal hurdles, they may actually enjoy the story that lies underneath.

Upon finishing the book, I contemplated its purpose, and found myself comparing it to Margret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. Anderson’s character of Violet, like Mitchell’s Melanie, represents a bygone time. Violet, unlike Titus and his friends, is caring, compassionate and aware of the world; traits that no longer exist in Anderson’s corrupt, mindless, consumer driven world. Like Gone With the Wind, I don’t see any teen actually reading this book on their own, finding the concept or language a huge hurdle to overcome. Also like GWTW, Anderson’s Feed would work well with the screen treatment, as much of his writing had to do with creating a creepy and dark visual world.

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In a dystopian future world, the internet has been installed directly into people's brains. Some rebel against the feed and refuse its installation, but most accept it without question. After a generation of feed users, the feed has changed how people interact, and has greatly lowered humanity's

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attention span. But this is certainly a book to pay attention to. Subtle revelations about the breakdown of society and nature pop up in the book that mirror concerns from modern day society. Our protagonist is likable to a point, but never really summons to courage of his friend Violet to rebel against the messages of a consumerist culture that he has been inundated with since birth. The book itself is a warning against the future of technology that ought to be paid attention to and fully considered.

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I liked the concept of the world gone dumb and the interesting vision of a society run by the corporations (not that much of a stretch of the imagination). I just found the story very flat after cyber attack. There was so much potential this story failed to live up to; from a clear attack on the

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loss of individuality to a more dynamic fight to retain personal emotion. Instead, the novel gets lost in a sappy teenage love story and devotes too much attention to "getting mal". Very disappointing.

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