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GSLIS-West LISSA Book Group

Filed under GSLIS West
Posted by GSLIS, March 16, 2005
View all posts for March 2005

Any and all interested in participating in the LISSA book group -- we are reading the book FEED by M.T. Anderson for our April meeting. we will be meeting at 10 - 12 on Sunday, April 10 (address will be announced later). plan on brunch type food (pot luck) and a discussion of the book.

this is a really good book and will offer plenty of interesting discussion. also, it is widely available through public libraries. (I recommend the book-on-tape version especially, which shouldn't be hard to get a hold of either.) I'm pasting the review from Publisher's Weekly to convince the weary. by the way, those of you that have already read this book (and I know there are plenty) should definatley join us on April 10.

I hope everyone is enjoying Spring Break! Lisa

From Publishers Weekly: In this chilling novel, Anderson (Burger Wuss; Thirsty) imagines a society dominated by the feed a next-generation Internet/television hybrid that is directly hardwired into the brain. Teen narrator Titus never questions his world, in which parents select their babies' attributes in the conceptionarium, corporations dominate the information stream, and kids learn to employ the feed more efficiently in School. But everything changes when he and his pals travel to the moon for spring break. There Titus meets home-schooled Violet, who thinks for herself, searches out news and asserts that "Everything we've grown up with the stories on the feed, the games, all of that it's all streamlining our personalities so we're easier to sell to." Without exposition, Anderson deftly combines elements of today's teen scene, including parties and shopping malls, with imaginative and disturbing fantasy twists. "Chats" flow privately from mind to mind; Titus flies an "upcar"; people go "mal" (short for "malfunctioning") in contraband sites that intoxicate by scrambling the feed; and, after Titus and his friends develop lesions, banner ads and sit-coms dub the lesions the newest hot trend, causing one friend to commission a fake one and another to outdo her by getting cuts all over her body. Excerpts from the feed at the close of each chapter demonstrate the blinding barrage of entertainment and temptations for conspicuous consumption. Titus proves a believably flawed hero, and ultimately the novel's greatest strength lies in his denial of and uncomfortable awakening to the truth. This satire offers a thought-provoking and scathing indictment that may prod readers to examine the more sinister possibilities of corporate- and media-dominated culture. Ages 14-up.