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.

Feed isn't a terrible book. 

Like many other Sci-fi books, it has good messages and serves as a warning against ourselves. It gives society another example of what we could become in the future. 

So why do I dislike it so much? 

First of all, the lack of character development. I know the book is written to make you think that the character is going to change AFTER the ending, but reading a book where the character's worldview is that of privileged ignorance for the ENTIRE BOOK is really frustrating. 

Second of all, all the stupid toxic masculinity. I understand that this book is told from the perspective of a teenage boy, but that's not an excuse for all the stupid, "and I felt like a man, talking to men about manly things*" type of crap. If the author wanted to write this like this was the character who acted like this, then he should have written it like that. Instead, I found the book to have a lot of "toxically masculine" subtext, and it really irritated me. Also, did it really have to be so heteronormative? Even if a book doesn't have LGBTQ representation, that doesn't mean it has to be written like the only people that exist are straight and cis people. It's not true and just kind of stupid, like when you go to the extent of talking about how half the pillows on a bed are for a man and the other half for his wife**. 

Thirdly, there's an extreme lack of communication between Titus, the main character, and Violet, his girlfriend. They never talk about their relationship, and when they disagree on things (which happens quite a bit), they don't talk through it, they just ignore it. And again, I understand if the author wanted to write a problematic relationship. The issue I have with it is that the author didn't write the relationship to SOUND problematic. 

This book irritated me on so many levels it almost made me want to burn it (or maybe that was because we'd just read Fahrenheit 451 in class). Although the messages were good, the characters and side plots were just examples of stupid teenage moments that were never resolved or even addressed as an issue, instead, they were treated like this is normal life. I suppose in that messed-up universe, it was. Please tell me there isn't another book like this. I've given up.

If you for some reason enjoy torturing yourself and think this book is a worthwhile read (why, I don't know), I would say the age recommendation is...uh...155. No one should read this. (I'm kidding, our age recommendation is 12-13+)

-Pigeon

*Not a direct quote
**Not from this book, but I have actually read a book that said that. It's stupid.