Feed

In the dystopian future of Feed, most of the world has received brain implants, called “the feed,” to access a broad type of internet that allows communication, the use of vast databases and extremely personalized shopping. One person with the implant is Titus, a teenager who is happy living a consumerist lifestyle marked by heavy corporate influence, instant online gratification and ignorance to the ecological devastation that surrounds him. That is, until he meets Violet and both of their feeds get hacked, leading them to be disconnected from the network and forced to confront the real world. As Titus and Violet grow close, their opinions on the feed begin to diverge, and when they boot up their implants again, it sparks a deadly set of events as the world around them sinks further into chaos. Brooding, dark, sardonic and all-too-prescient, Feed has gathered legions of fans who see it as both a cautionary tale of a tech-reliant future and an admonishment of modern consumer life. A finalist for the 2002 National Book Award, Feed has regularly, and controversially, been taught in schools; it made the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most frequently banned and challenged books from 2010 to 2019. —Peter Allen Clark

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