Anderson, M.T. Feed. Read by David Aaron Baker. New York: Random House Listening Library, 2002.
Reason read: May is considered Birds and Bees month and since teenagers have raging hormones I thought I would combine the two and read Feed.
Confessional: I am not a big fan of futuristic, dystopian novels. Feed is Anderson’s commentary of big corporation greed and its power over society in the form of extreme consumerism. Additionally, information technology and data mining are taken further by the invention of a brain-implanted feed network capable of scanning and collecting people’s thoughts and feelings and regurgitated back as commercials. Told from the first person perspective of Titus, we meet Linc (cloned after Abraham Lincoln), Marty (the guy with the Nike speech tattoo which causes him to insert the word Nike into every sentence), Loga (ex-girlfriend of Titus), Calista (the first girl to get lesions as a fashion statement) and Violet (Titus’s new girlfriend and the one to reveal the dangers of the feed). Violet is the most interesting of the group. As an underprivileged teen, she did not get a feed insert until she was older. This causes malfunctioning and Violet’s ability to “fight” the feed. Although it is a predictable ending, I appreciated Anderson’s reality of the situation.
As an aside, definitely find the audio book read by David Aaron Baker. It is a spectacular performance.
The popularity of having lesions to the point of creating them reminded me of the Seuss book, Gertrude McFuzz, the story about the bird who wanted glorious tail feathers and got so greedy collecting them she could no longer fly.
Author fact: Anderson also write Thirsty which is on my Challenge list.
Book trivia: Feed was a National Book Award finalist and winner of the Boston Globe Horn Book Award and the Golden Duck Award (Hal Clement).
Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about Feed except to include it in the list of sure teen-pleasers.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best for Teens” (p 23).
~*LunaSea*~ 