Book Review: Feed

found here

So before I delve into my massive booklist that I outlined last night, I decided to go ahead and read this book Feed by MT Anderson. This book is required by one of my summer classes, so I decided to go ahead and knock it out.

A brief overview:

This book takes place in a future where computer chips have taken over the basic brain functions in humans. The world is deteriorating and humans live in the mass consumer market where their "feed" is tailored to their personality and advertises to them constantly. This "feed" takes over the basic functions of the human brain: the emotions, movement, thought, etc. People no longer have to know anything, they can look it up in their feed. Titus, the main character, and his friends take Spring Break on the moon where he meets this unusual girl named Violet. Violet is so unusual because she decides to start fighting the feed and brings Titus along.

My opinion:

I am going to admit that I was very confused the first part of the book. It was not until you got into the book a little bit that the idea of the feed was explained to you at all. I felt lost and had no clue what the narrator was talking about until about 30 pages in. When it was explained, I understood a little better and started to enjoy the novel a little bit more. This novel is classified as YA, but I think even that classification is stretching it a little bit. Yes, the book would probably appeal to YA readers, but there was quite a bit of language in the book that I just felt was completely unnecessary. I think that Anderson makes a very valid point about people being too driven by the consumer market, too easily swayed by the advertisements all around them. Overall, I think I would give this book a 3/5.