Name: Feed
Rating: 3.253424657534246 (73 reviews)
ISBN: 9780763662622

M. T. Anderson

In a future where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who is in serious trouble.

Feed

Lindy

I remember not liking Feed very much circa 2005 due to the (view spoiler)[dying (hide spoiler)] manic pixie dream girl-ness of it all, and the same holds true today, but I also think that Feed's worth reading. MT Anderson writes with more subtlety, ambivalence, and irony than is typical for YA fiction, especially YA genre fiction, capturing technological anxieties in the years between the dawn of push media and the development of the smartphone while also touching on the privatization of education, the health insurance market, and global climate change. Even though the futuristic slang is patterned off 90s teen slang, the book still feels fresh. Of course I write this while the other half of my brain is telling me that it's just Brave New World YA-ified, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Also! Check out this extremely gen x take on nostalgia:
(view spoiler)[
  [....] it turned out that it was something called Nostalgia Feedback. People had been getting nostalgia for fashions that were closer and closer to their own time, until finally people became nostalgic for the moment they were actually living in, and the feedback completely froze them.
 (hide spoiler)]

Michael Springer

You could be eating Taco Bell tacos right now! In fact, there's a Taco Bell nearby calling your name!



Just think of that taste as the steaming beef-like substance hits your tongue, with Taco Bell's savory blend of spices all ready to give you MOUTHGASM! With a side of those cinnamon twists, and a big, plastic quart of a dark, sugary substance, you're ready to have a tasty tasty meal! And you've earned it! Perhaps you should consider buying some when you finish reading this review! 

Because this review is about what life would be like it we had internet access in our head. Awesome? NO. It would totally suck. Nearly as much as the Dirt Devil In-Ground Ultra-Sucker, which temporarily has a $50 mail-in rebate, as long as you ACT NOW. 

It sucks for a variety of reasons. . . for one, how would you feel if, while you were trying to talk to someone and he was looking you straight in the eyes, you started getting the sneaking suspicion he was watching Archer? Or you thought he might be on Goodreads, tinkering around with some new review? And this made you start wondering how well your last review was doing RE: votes, and before you could think twice about it you were on Goodreads, checking your updates? And then your conversation trails off because he really IS watching Archer, and now you're posting a status update b/c you've read another 20 pages in a book--BUT WAIT! There aren't books! Nobody reads anymore! So it's an internet without Goodreads! More about that after these messages.



And we're back! I guess the most annoying part of the whole internet-in-the-head thing would be the constant barrage of advertisements. I mean, when you can't control when you have to endure an advertisement, can't turn it off, can't change the channels, because the advertisement is literally in your head....I mean, WTF? 

But RE: this book, it's a well-done mix of young adult literature and dystopia that manages a techno-teen speak that works and is more funny than annoying. This is quite impressive, although not as impressive as the taste of Bacardi, which helps you become skinny and slutty, i.e. hot. 



Anderson does amazingly well at making you actually feel for the main character, considering he--along with almost every other character--is even more wrapped up in consumerism than we are. I know, right? Happiness is an idea communicated by advertisements, and identity is created by which of these happinesses you choose to pursue. Are you the Bacardi ho? Are you the dude in the field of flowers tossing his kid up in the air? Are you walking down the beach and sliding a diamond ring on a finger? Who are you?

The main character falls for a girl who doesn't seem as...well, distractible and materialistic as the other people he knows. This is a big turn-on, although not as much as a pair of Air Max 90 Infrareds. You don't have a pair yet? They're the dopest of the dope. These shoes are so hot, girls literally make out with them. 

 

So, he's attracted to the way she seems so strangely thoughtful and reflective. But, it's a dystopia, so blah blah blah, it goes to shit. 

There's a lot of absolutely hilarious parts of this book, most of them in the first half. Things then get real. RE: funny things, though, 

1. Everyone has lesions on their skin because of pollution. They're so common that they are usually ignored, until it comes into fashion to get artificially created, ornamental ones.
2. They go to the moon one day because they're bored.
3. They go to a farm. A filet mignon farm, with big pulsating walls of beef all around them. And they go through a beef maze. I laughed until I cried.


That said, I shall conclude. This conclusion is brought to you by Chevron, the environmental fossil fuel company. We're working toward a progressive energy future, and sustainable resource practices. And those terms really do mean something. 

My conclusion is that IT'S NOT TOO LATE FOR US. We still have the chance to be creative, innovative, and make choices for ourselves. And if we don't use these abilities, we may end up losing them. So, lets all go out and express our individuality by finding products that help us define who we are as individuals. Maybe then, then, we will be free.

*read for class*

CAN A MAIN CHARACTER/NARRATOR GET ANY WORSE THAN THIS!!??!

Kali Olson

Maxie Froelicher

** spoiler alert **
           This book was not good. From the writing style to the plot itself, it wasn’t good. Sentences were short and written with the voice of what’s supposed to be a high schooler, but obviously we’ve run into another case of “adult author assumes this is how teens talk”. It’s really not. Not only that, but everyone talks that way; the teens, their parents, the doctors. Everyone except the love interests father because he’s supposed to be seen as “weird and other”. 
The made up slang was so hard to get past, especially since it permeated through the whole book, not just the dialogue. Most of it wasn’t even creative, but I really can’t get over “getting drunk” being “chugalug”. 

By around page 100 I was seeing the formation of what looked to be an anti-capitalist plot, with the two main characters breaking from normal society and starting or joining something, but then the main character just. Didn’t. The love interest did but it seemed like, though she was always closer to being pro-earth, she only got super focused on it cause her tech was failing. And since his wasn’t, he just didn’t care. There were little hints of social and political unrest mentioned and I would have loved to have explored more into that, instead of just getting a few sentences and then suddenly everyone is physically getting worse and losing hair and skin?

My biggest criticism of this book is using literal self harm as a fashion trend. The kids were giving themselves/getting “lesions” because their favourite celebrities were doing it? They were purposefully getting deep cuts in their skin to look cool and popular? Who thought this was okay? 

I will say the end of the book did make me emotional, it was upsetting seeing the description of Violet, the love interest, declining and basically dying, but even that was disrupted by the sentence “I could smell my own sweat in my folded places.” What does that even mean, and why on EARTH would you put that in the most emotional part of your book?

I gave this book a 2/5 because of the last 15 pages and the barest hint of what I thought I was promised by the blurb.

Read for Around the Year in 52 Books 2020 prompt #4 - A book set in a place or time that you wouldn't want to live

Feed

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