Feed

Rating:
Summary: Read the Book!!!
Review: I have read many books over my 17 years of life and I would have to say that Feed by M.T. Anderson is one that I would recommend to everyone.
I do not write reviews, so to write this on my own accord should show how powerful this book really is. I was literally blow away by it. This is the first time I have read a book by M.T. Anderson and was delightfully surprised by the emotions this book can cause.
It takes place in the future, how far away I am not sure, but still it brings to life teenage society to a very fine point. It is has first person narrative that was weird at first but one gets used to it fast.
At the end of the book there is a reader's guide and a conversation with the author which I found very helpful to understand where the auther is coming from and the weight that this book has to our every day life.
I will from now on look at advertising in a new light and beware of what it is truely trying to do.
I found it meg cool and ironically funny so...read it and understand why!!!

Rating:
Summary: a BRILLIANT and STUNNING sci-fi satire!
Review: I just finished this book last night & I was stunned. This is easily one of the best books I've read (either for young adults or older adults). Anderson paints a very thought-provoking picture of where our shallow, technology-obsessed consumer culture could possibly be heading. He also captures the speech patterns of teenagers perfectly...and I should know because I teach 8th graders.

Read this book!!!! You won't regret it.

Rating:
Summary: Feed: It's no 1984...
Review: I just read "Feed" last week and it was, as some readers have said, "interesting". It really makes you realize how vulernable we are to what companies tell us to think. If Abercrombie says, "Jump", half the teenage population is up in the air. As another reviewer commented, I didn't like Mr. Anderson's writing style. It was too immature I thought. I guess because it's Titus saying it, but I'd be interested to see if all his work is in this formatting. Another problem I had with "Feed" was that the main character really wasn't likable. Titus is a moronic, sex-crazed, naive, jackass who has probably never had an original idea in his life. I couldn't identify with him because he was just so stupid and it frustrated me. I liked Violet, although at first I found her pretensious. The whole idea is very creative and thought-provoking though as people don't go to "real" school, dance on the moon, and seem to shop constantly. Their feeds control their lives and since they never seem to think for themselves or actually learn or remember anything, the entire human race is basically incompetent. To get an example, Titus says something along the lines in one of his conversations, "Why do we need to know what battles George Washington fought in during the Civil War?" The end is chilling though. Everything must go.

Rating:
Summary: Short, sharp and brilliant
Review: I loved this. It's aimed at teenagers, but I'd recommend it to adult readers. The center of the book is very simple - two kids meet and fall in love and things fall apart. It's not about a fast-moving, exciting plot or even about the setting - details are sketched in enough to build up a picture of the frightening future, but the real focus of the book is the way it's written, in first person from the damaged, tilted perspective of a middle-class kid with a feed. Anderson tips you right into his perspective and keeps you there - farm country with the meat mazes, the little jolts when you realize he's trying to talk instead of IM'ing, his mounting confusion and pain at what's happening.

Halfway through, I thought it might be turning into a politic novel with espionage, riots and more, a "big" story, and I'm glad it didn't. They're just two kids, trying to grow up and live in a dying world. I love the way the story is told, the overlay of ads and images, the different layers of meaning and intent, the hints at what's happening and how he views it. I'm really glad he ended it the way he did. Definitely worth reading and re-reading.

Rating:
Summary: What was the point?
Review: I read maybe 3 or 4 chapters of this book before I had to just admit defeat. The author had a very interesting idea but a very poor way of presenting it. He throws in words like 'unit', that are supposed to mean something but he fails to illustrate what that is. Also I think the '?' key on his computer/typewriter was stuck, for they seem to just be thrown in there for the hell of it. Nothing can be achieved by reading this book except wasted time and a decrease in intelligence.

Rating:
Summary: From Ignorant to Aware
Review: I read this book on a recommendation from a fellow librarian in my library. I didn't think I'd like the book, based on what I had read in the inside cover. But, when I opened the book, I was immediately drawn into a disturbing tale of a future I don't think that I want.

Basically, almost everyone has "feeds" installed directly into their brains, which run constant ads and marketing campaigns, as well as performing other functions. Most people find it to be a way of life, except for one girl, whose "feed" begins to malfunction shortly after she meets this boy.

I don't want to give away too much, and I'm afraid I'm not giving away enough, but I hope it's enough for me to say that I got chills up and down my spine at the thought of becoming like these kids in the future. Technology is fine up to a point, but I draw the line at letting anyone into my brain like that.

Trust me. It's a chilling read.

Rating:
Summary: Richie's Picks: FEED
Review: I was enlisted earlier this year by a college professor to share my expertise with her online children's literature class. Two weeks ago, just before I left for BookExpo, one of the students asked me:

"It seems that you like reading very much, maybe you can share with us why do you enjoy it so much? I really would like to know."

The beginning of my response was:

"A great book can take me off to a different world or bring me closer to this one. Frequently a great book will grab me by the throat and slam me against the wall..."

FEED, the latest book by M.T. Anderson, did all of those things to me--and more. In fact, at the moment it feels as if my nose is pulverized and askew and that the skin covering my shoulder blades scraped away when I slid down that wall and landed hard on my bottom.

I woke up long before dawn--from a mildly bad dream related to a part of the story I read last night--and quietly slipped out to my desk to finish the rest of the book.

FEED is a dark, futuristic satire. It's a tale both intense and extreme that pokes fun at our disposible, consumeristic society, at our communications revolution, at the increasing role of corporations in our education systems, and at the diminished vocabulary skills among those people who consistantly resort to a particular four-letter word as the adjective of choice in any given situation.

You may not enjoy reading a book that spews like a rapper or slams into you as if you've taken a left turn into a mosh pit, but the profound messages in FEED clearly make it the cautionary tale of the year.

The story begins on the Moon, where Titus and his friends have gone for spring break. He and his buddies all have Feed, which is an online computer implant typically installed shortly after birth. Feed constantly bombards the characters with information and banners, much of which has to do with the latest fashions, upcars, and music. It also provides them with Chat--the capacity to mentally instant message each other.

"...I was playing with the magnets on my boots and trying not to look at her. I didn't want her to feel my eyes before I made my move. I was careful. Quendy and Loga went off to the bathroom because hairstyles had changed.
Marty drifted around and made slit-eyes at Link. Link and I were chatting about the girl, like I was going,She is meg youch,and he was going, What the hell's she wearing?, and I was going, Wool. It's wool. Like from an animal,and then Calista did her own chat to us, which was,If you want to hear about an animal, what about two guys staring with their mouths wide open so they look completely Cro-Magnon?..."

So Titus gets to meet the girl, Violet, but shortly thereafter they and most of his friends have their Feeds hacked by a wild old white-haired guy on the dance floor...

This vision of our future planet is one you don't want to miss. I've never seen or read the original story of Titus (Andronicus--Shakespeare tragedy), but its characterization as symbolization of "the essential absurdity of modern life" certainly fits Anderson's frightening tale of corporate power and a used-up planet. Pass up reading this one at your own risk.

Richie Partington...

Rating:
Summary: Clever, frightening, imaginative, searing
Review: I was very interested to read all the mixed reader reviews.

I, too, was put off by the frustrating language and curses at first. But then I realized that was the exact point the author was trying to make. These teen characters don't know enough vocabulary to talk in a more articulate way. And the question marks? They are meant to convey the same point - the limited speech and maturity of the teen characters.

I think the author was trying to "show" us, not "tell" us - which is how authors are supposed to write - the world of FEED. He doesn't come out and say, "This is the not-too-distant future, where consumerism and illiteracy run rampant, the environment has been poisoned, adults speak like teens, and every other word out of their mouths is [obsenities]. He showed it to us instead.

I, for one, was very impressed with FEED. The satire and indictment ring so true, and seem so inevitable, as another reviewer put it, that it's positively goose-bumpingly frightening.

Way to go, M.T. Anderson!

Rating:
Summary: WOW. Wish I could give it more than 5 stars.
Review: I'd heard good things about this book, so I was willing to give it a try even though I was less than impressed with the same author's vampire novel, Thirsty.

Feed, however, deserved all its buzz, plus more. This book is a piece of brilliance. In this dystopian novel, you'll hear echoes of Holden Caulfield, as well as bits of Minority Report and language worthy of writers like Douglas Coupland and Francesca Lia Block, but M.T. Anderson still creates a world that is at once unique and frighteningly familiar.

The invented slang and the culture from which it has sprung are pitch-perfect, and the tone of the writing rides a fine line between absurdly funny and darkly horrifying. The futuristic world described in the book is exhausting, sickening, ridiculous, seductive and brokenly beautiful. The fact that it is, more or less, the world we live in today, makes this the most terrifying book I've read since Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale."

This book is for people who like to think and who are willing to examine their lives. Such people -- no matter how young they are -- will be able to handle the occasional curse word that pops up in the book.

I couldn't put this book down. It's a fast read, and worth rereading. I felt the ending was a little "light" and disappointing, but the ride that gets you there is unique and unforgettable.

Rating:
Summary: Satire may soar over the heads of young readers
Review: Imagine instant-messaging your friends in your mind. Imagine all those obnoxious computer pop-up ads happening right in your brain. Imagine retailers knowing precisely what you've ever bought, your favorite color, your shoe size. Imagine liking it. This is the scary, weird world described in M.T. Anderson's "Feed". Titus and his friends are average middle-class American teenagers of the future. They take for granted the weird convergence of technology, corporate intervention, and mind-control they live with known as a feed. Enter Violet; a girl Titus meets on spring break, a girl who wants to 'fight the feed'.

There are important and compelling issues raised in this novel about advertising, privacy, conformity, individualism and technology. It's a book that demands discussion, explanation and consideration. Unfortunately, I think that much of it may be over the heads of its teenaged target audience. Readers who need things spelled out may be challenged by this book because significant aspects of the setting (and what a grim future it is) are implied, or only mentioned in passing. I think few teenagers will be satisfied with the ending. And fewer still will probably spend much time thinking about the issues in the story after they've put it down. It's too bad that the profanity and few mild references to sexual situations will keep this book out of most classrooms, because it's really a story that deserves to be discussed, especially by young adults.

I do recommend this book for advanced and thoughtful teen readers. Sci-fi fans in particular will enjoy it. Other readers should appreciate the accurate portrayal of teen dating, cliques, jealousies, insecurities and friendships. I hope the larger, more important themes of the book will be grasped as well.