Customer Reviews
Feed for thought 
2008-07-16
It's easy enough to compare every dystopia book to 1984 or "Brave New World". Yet here's a dystopia book directed towards a completely different audience, we, the internet generation - teenagers. Aside from the completely different sort of world, "Feed" touches on a number of entirely different themes from the most famous dystopia novels.
Yet "Feed" does the same ultimate thing "Brave New World" did for me - it made my brain hurt, provided me with some food for thought, and made me a bit nauseous. It takes me to a whole new world full of familiarities yet starkly... worse. For instance, the internet, instead of being a fundamental part of my life, IS my life and is literally jacked into my brain. Fun, right?
Well, summer vacation has taught me that the internet gets boring after a while, as do numerous other services the "feed" provides. Main character Titus tells his story loosely and somewhat confusingly (there's a lot of "modern", made-up slang - there were some words that I still didn't understand until the end of the book), but the world is clear (radiation poisoning is mentioned casually at some point, indicating towards a wider world beyond the small, teen confines of the story).
"Feed" is something of a boy's book, but it's a welcome dystopia, especially in that it's clearly its own story. It's not an easy read and catching onto the made-up slang is a bit difficult, but rather interesting. Some will see themselves reflected in these characters and even in this weird kind of world. The ending is confusing and will make you scratch your head, flipping a few pages back to understand. And while there are messages etched deep into the book, it's also simply enjoyable and thought-provoking.
Highly recommended.
A Cautionary Tale for the Selfish Generation 
2008-07-14
In this text directed at young adults, I found myself bereft of compassion and hard to relate to the cold almost robotic emotions and actions of the cast. However, about half way into my forced endeavor (you see, this was a classroom assigned text) I found myself unable to stop reading.
It's the 1984 of a new generation. This book should be on reading lists worldwide, and more specifically on the classroom reading lists of its intended audience. The spoiled, self-centered children we are producing today could greatly benefit from reading about a world which shows the cold, artificial consequences of a consumer-driven society without human remorse. Without love. Without compassion.
This book is subtle and can use the guiding hand of an educated instructor but I truly believe it will survive as one of the great dystopian works of our time. And as much as Free Speech advocates quote Orwell today, I can only hope that my grandchildren will be quoting from Anderson when corporations are deciding the healthcare reforms of a nation so obsessed with capital gains. Then again, I can only hope that day never arrives.
Everything must go.
Great story to the disturbing end 2008-06-30
The story in itself is very well written. The launguage used makes it a bit more for teens 13+ years old. I enjoyed this book alot. The ending is very disturbing, but makes you think about the world. I won't give it away, but I would still recomend this book.
Great Book! 2008-06-22
When i was looking through my freshman reading list to see what the first book of high school i was going to be reading was, FEED popped out to me, so i picked it. I started reading it and just got SUCKED IN! It was an amazing book and i would recommend it to ANYONE!
not just for young adults 2008-05-27
feed is officially young adult fiction. but that category, i'm finding, can be really misleading. i would say this is a great work of fiction, that anyone in 8th grade or older could read (which, really, is true of a lot of great fiction, right?). of course, the fact that the main characters are all high schoolers doesn't hurt.
so, here's the deal: feed takes place in some kind of distant future. it's not clear how distant; but it is clear that the grandparents of the high school students in the book remember what life was like in the fairly close future. one of the brilliant things anderson does in this book is paint all kinds of passing descriptions of this future, details all over the place, without focusing the narrative lens on them. for instance, he never directly addresses the stacks of suburbs, vertical and self-contained, each with their own artificial sun and weather voted on by the home owner's association, but the description is there, like great framing.
the focus of the book is the "feed" that almost everyone has implanted in their brains in early childhood. it started as a brain-connected educational tool (or, at least, was marketed that way), much like the internet was talked about in its early days. but quickly, the feed became a replacement for theaters and television, radio and all other forms of listening to music, m-chatting (almost like esp -- a form of text communication brain-to-brain, along with file attachment options and such), purchasing, and - mostly - advertising. the feed provides a constant customized barrage of marketing, based on the emotions of the moment, experiences of the moment, things you're looking at, and much more.
the nutty thing about all of this is that it makes sense. the book plumbs, without being overly preachy, some of the "how we got heres" and "what this means" aspects of the feed.
on the surface, it's a story of a titus (a teenage guy), his group of extremely shallow friends, and a somewhat mysterious antagonist girlfriend who is suspicious of the feed, and has complications due to getting hers installed when she was 7 years old. but, of course, it's about much more than that.
so here's my grandiose statement:
aldous huxley's book, brave new world, published in 1932, took cutting edge technology of his time, along with current trajectories in religion, philosophy, science, and other areas, and projected a potential reality (told in story form, of course) of our current day. feed does the same - it takes our current technology, consumption, relational dynamics, political climate, and much more, and projects a trajectory for something like 80 years from now (give or take). some of it will crack you up, and some of it will freak you out.
a great, fun, somewhat uncomfortable, read.
'Feed' leaves me half full 
2008-04-14
Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains.For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world — and a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.
Scares even the MTV generation 2007-12-06
Feed is a glimpse of the not-very-unlikely future, centered on the typical teenager Titus. The lives of Titus and his friends are dominated by the titular Feed, a sort of internal combination of personal computer, internet, and television. Through the Feed, people are told what the popular fashions are, what music to listen to, and what to buy, with the option of buying right there and then.
While taking spring break on the moon, Titus meets Violet, a girl interested in more from life than listening to the Feed. From there, the story becomes an exploration of the Feed's dystopia and the minds of those who live within it.
Written in an eerily believable voice, M.T. Anderson creates a science fiction world with relevance. A frightening example of what our society may become, told in the context of a well-written story.
An awesome read! 2007-11-26
Finally, a timely dystopian novel! Not that 1984 nor Brave New World aren't great, they're just REALLY old. I would highly recommend this book!
Fabolous, future, feed. 2007-11-15
Demi Pickering
Mod. 1
Feed, by M.T. Anderson is about Titus, a boy in the future going through normal teenage stages, just with more gadgets and technology. Titus and his school go on one "normal" class field trip to the moon, and gets his entire life changed forever.
My favorite part of the book was when Titus was trying to choose an "upcar" to buy. He was down to two choices, a "truck" and a "sports car," he liked the truck because he could take a lot of his friends places with him, but he liked the sports car because it was more romantic for long drives to nowhere with his girlfriend, Violet. This is my favorite part of the book because it was really interesting to read all of the names that Mr. Anderson thought of as future car brands, it made me laugh.
I do recommend the book Feed, by M.T. Anderson, because it is a really interesting book about a topic more people should think about regularly. Mr. Anderson does in fact have an imagination, some of the things in the book, I have absolutely no idea where he could have gotten the inspiration from. For example, the title of the book is feed, but, do you know what a feed is? Well, it's basically a computer in your head that keeps you updated, entertained, and incredibly smart. The book Feed is definitely a page turner and an excellent read. I highly recommend the book Feed for TEENS and PRE-TEENS, because of harsh language used profusely, throughout the entire book.
Adolescence of the future? 2007-09-03
A teenaged boy and his friends take a spring break trip to the moon. They have high hopes for fun, "but it turned out to completely suck," according to the main character of the story, a rich boy named Titus. The kids do and say the types of things you might expect kids from the future to do and say. But they have chips implanted into their brains allowing them to view (and order) merchandise online (targeted to them specifically based on browsing preferences), pretty much everything else that can done nowadays on the Internet, and more. During their vacation the teens are affected in varying degrees by an unforeseen incident involving a protester. As a result, Titus and his independent-thinking love interest, Violet, are forever changed. Feed provides a disturbing look at the possibilities of the future and will probably be better appreciated by its target audience - teens. Also good: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1984 by George Orwell, and Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.
