Titus is your average, ordinary teenager. He goes to school, drives a car, and likes to spend most of his time with his friends. The only difference is he lives in the future and drives an upcar, with are the flying kind, and has a feed, which is a mini "personalized" computer in his head connected with his brain. The feed was invented to help students because they literally have a computer with them wherever they go. The feeds help so much, that no one can imagine living without them. That is until something goes wrong with it.
M.T. Anderson's style of writing in this book was complicated. Anderson writes in a somewhat confusing way, which is due to the fact that the book is from the perspective of a teenager. There seems to be too much going on at some points and not in others, which makes the book hard to read and understand. Also, the amount of explanation given for things that Anderson made up is cryptic some times which forces that reader to guess how things work in the society that he's created. It does give the sense that the book is from the future due to the slang that they use . The narrator's voice is like a normal teenager's, full of slang, which can be very confusing if you don't know the slang. It is unique in the fact that I've never read a book before where I didn't understand what the characters were saying, simply because of the slang they were using, which was impossible to look up. While the dialect was hard to understand, the characters were almost as difficult.
Anderson's characters are complicated and extremely basic, all at the same time. Anderson's characters are slightly hard to believe, if only because they seem to be extremely shallow and underdeveloped. I didn't really like either of the main characters, Titus and violet, because of this. Titus, to me, seemed a little selfish, especially towards the end of the book, when he and Violet had been going out for a while. For example, after violet loses a year of her memory she tries to send Titus all of her memories from before she got her feed, "She kept sending me things. I didn't open them. I let them sit...I didn't listen to any of them, any of the stories. I just kept them...I deleted everything she had sent me."(200) At the same time, I didn't like Violet because she wanted to fit in with Titus and his friends, since she'd been home schooled, but she never could figure out when to stop talking, which didn't help any of Titus' friends to like her. Violet also became very clingy and to some extent creepy, like when she sent Titus a list of things she wanted to do before she died and some things on the list were to get married to him and have kids. This dislike of the characters made it difficult to read the book, but it was even harder to read the book, since I could never really grasp what the setting looked like.
Anderson's setting is vague, at best. The setting of the book is earth, many many years into the future. the neighborhoods are stacked on top of each other and each neighborhood is connected to the others by a system of tubes. people drive cars that fly and almost all of the natural world is dying, like the oceans, which is almost a black color and is so toxic you need a protective suit to go near it. Animals have been forced out of their habitats, which have all been cut down, and live in the cities. vacations are taken to other planets and the moon, which of course the U.S. is trying to annex. While sometimes there is great description, "We could see all these miles of filet mignon from where we were sitting, and some places where the genetic coding had gone wrong and there, in the middle of the beef, the tissue formed a horn or an eye or a heart blinking up at the sunset, which was this bang red, and which hit on all those miles of muscle and made it flex and quiver, with all these shudders running across the top of it..."(118) other times there is not much at all. This goes for the plot as well, sometimes Anderson forces you to make inferences and guesses as to what is happening.
Titus' life was going as well as it could for a teenager, until he and his friends went to the moon for spring break. There he meets Violet, a girl who seems a little awkward around others, and talks in ways that neither Titus, nor his friends can figure out. But they decide that she's okay and take her with them when later they go to a club. That's when things go south. Violet, Titus and four of his friends are touched by an old man in the club, which causes their feeds to malfunction. "And then the police were at our sides whispering to us, 'We're going to have to shut you off now. We're going to have to shut you off now.' And then they touched us, and our bodies fell, and there was nothing else."(34) Once everyone wakes up the hospital, it takes time for them to get their feeds back, and by this time Titus and Violet have developed a relationship. Violet had been home schooled for her entire life and since her father is a professor, he has a lot of knowledge, especially since he made it through college without the feed. He teaches Violet things that Titus knows almost nothing about. "She asked me, 'Do you know how to read?' I nodded. 'I can read a little. I kind of protested it in School on the grounds that the silent "E" is stupid."(54) Violet and Titus have a fun couple of months together, but then Violet finds out that there is a malfunction in her feed. "'The feed is tied into everything. Your body control, your emotions, your memory. Everything. Sometimes feed errors are fatal. I don't know. I could lose...I don't know. They thought it would stabilize. But it didn't. It's getting worse.'"(136) Violet then tries to do as much as she can in the time she has.
This book makes many connections to our world today. it relates to the fact that our world is slowly becoming more reliant on computers and technology to learn and do things for us, which is the basic idea behind the feed itself. Also, this book kind of relates to the way that we treat the Earth. In the book, the oceans are toxic, there are no forests left, and animals are dying because of the toxins in the environments. This is similar to how we're cutting down the rain forests, which are key to the survival of the species that live there, since the rain forests have a delicate ecosystem. Plus we are polluting our oceans and fresh water sources by disposing of garbage in them, which not only hurts the animals, but could also hurt us in the long run.
Overall, Anderson's book is a challenging read, simply because of the style in which he writes, which makes you come to your own conclusions about things. Also, his style makes it hard to get a clear picture of the environment that it is set in. Also, the characters and the dialect can be confusing as well. This is why I would only recommend this book to someone if they were okay with the fact that these are what make the book complicating and hard to understand and really grasp the point of the story.
Feed by M.T. Anderson
A Deteriorating World by Blayne Marion
Titus is your average, ordinary teenager. He goes to school, drives a car, and likes to spend most of his time with his friends. The only difference is he lives in the future and drives an upcar, with are the flying kind, and has a feed, which is a mini "personalized" computer in his head connected with his brain. The feed was invented to help students because they literally have a computer with them wherever they go. The feeds help so much, that no one can imagine living without them. That is until something goes wrong with it.
M.T. Anderson's style of writing in this book was complicated. Anderson writes in a somewhat confusing way, which is due to the fact that the book is from the perspective of a teenager. There seems to be too much going on at some points and not in others, which makes the book hard to read and understand. Also, the amount of explanation given for things that Anderson made up is cryptic some times which forces that reader to guess how things work in the society that he's created. It does give the sense that the book is from the future due to the slang that they use . The narrator's voice is like a normal teenager's, full of slang, which can be very confusing if you don't know the slang. It is unique in the fact that I've never read a book before where I didn't understand what the characters were saying, simply because of the slang they were using, which was impossible to look up. While the dialect was hard to understand, the characters were almost as difficult.
Anderson's characters are complicated and extremely basic, all at the same time. Anderson's characters are slightly hard to believe, if only because they seem to be extremely shallow and underdeveloped. I didn't really like either of the main characters, Titus and violet, because of this. Titus, to me, seemed a little selfish, especially towards the end of the book, when he and Violet had been going out for a while. For example, after violet loses a year of her memory she tries to send Titus all of her memories from before she got her feed, "She kept sending me things. I didn't open them. I let them sit...I didn't listen to any of them, any of the stories. I just kept them...I deleted everything she had sent me."(200) At the same time, I didn't like Violet because she wanted to fit in with Titus and his friends, since she'd been home schooled, but she never could figure out when to stop talking, which didn't help any of Titus' friends to like her. Violet also became very clingy and to some extent creepy, like when she sent Titus a list of things she wanted to do before she died and some things on the list were to get married to him and have kids. This dislike of the characters made it difficult to read the book, but it was even harder to read the book, since I could never really grasp what the setting looked like.
Anderson's setting is vague, at best. The setting of the book is earth, many many years into the future. the neighborhoods are stacked on top of each other and each neighborhood is connected to the others by a system of tubes. people drive cars that fly and almost all of the natural world is dying, like the oceans, which is almost a black color and is so toxic you need a protective suit to go near it. Animals have been forced out of their habitats, which have all been cut down, and live in the cities. vacations are taken to other planets and the moon, which of course the U.S. is trying to annex. While sometimes there is great description, "We could see all these miles of filet mignon from where we were sitting, and some places where the genetic coding had gone wrong and there, in the middle of the beef, the tissue formed a horn or an eye or a heart blinking up at the sunset, which was this bang red, and which hit on all those miles of muscle and made it flex and quiver, with all these shudders running across the top of it..."(118) other times there is not much at all. This goes for the plot as well, sometimes Anderson forces you to make inferences and guesses as to what is happening.
Titus' life was going as well as it could for a teenager, until he and his friends went to the moon for spring break. There he meets Violet, a girl who seems a little awkward around others, and talks in ways that neither Titus, nor his friends can figure out. But they decide that she's okay and take her with them when later they go to a club. That's when things go south. Violet, Titus and four of his friends are touched by an old man in the club, which causes their feeds to malfunction. "And then the police were at our sides whispering to us, 'We're going to have to shut you off now. We're going to have to shut you off now.' And then they touched us, and our bodies fell, and there was nothing else."(34) Once everyone wakes up the hospital, it takes time for them to get their feeds back, and by this time Titus and Violet have developed a relationship. Violet had been home schooled for her entire life and since her father is a professor, he has a lot of knowledge, especially since he made it through college without the feed. He teaches Violet things that Titus knows almost nothing about. "She asked me, 'Do you know how to read?' I nodded. 'I can read a little. I kind of protested it in School on the grounds that the silent "E" is stupid."(54) Violet and Titus have a fun couple of months together, but then Violet finds out that there is a malfunction in her feed. "'The feed is tied into everything. Your body control, your emotions, your memory. Everything. Sometimes feed errors are fatal. I don't know. I could lose...I don't know. They thought it would stabilize. But it didn't. It's getting worse.'"(136) Violet then tries to do as much as she can in the time she has.
This book makes many connections to our world today. it relates to the fact that our world is slowly becoming more reliant on computers and technology to learn and do things for us, which is the basic idea behind the feed itself. Also, this book kind of relates to the way that we treat the Earth. In the book, the oceans are toxic, there are no forests left, and animals are dying because of the toxins in the environments. This is similar to how we're cutting down the rain forests, which are key to the survival of the species that live there, since the rain forests have a delicate ecosystem. Plus we are polluting our oceans and fresh water sources by disposing of garbage in them, which not only hurts the animals, but could also hurt us in the long run.
Overall, Anderson's book is a challenging read, simply because of the style in which he writes, which makes you come to your own conclusions about things. Also, his style makes it hard to get a clear picture of the environment that it is set in. Also, the characters and the dialect can be confusing as well. This is why I would only recommend this book to someone if they were okay with the fact that these are what make the book complicating and hard to understand and really grasp the point of the story.