Monday, February 23, 2004
This weekend I also read Feed by M. T. Anderson, which is the best YA book I've read in a long time. It's ambitious, daring, funny, sad, and satirical in the grand tradition of Orwell. M. T. Anderson wrote Burger Wuss, one of my favorite YA books, and I've been wanting to read this one ever since it came out. It describes a world where marketing and consumerism has finally whittled down the American people into a nation of materialistic people focus-grouped into idiocy, incapable of using any words longer than 2 syllables. And even that's pushing it. It's a world where teen-speak (complete with rampant swearing) has become the norm and nearly everyone has a computer implanted in his or her head, the better to facilitate shopping. Kids go to School (TM) not to learn pesky facts, but to learn how to use the feed to shop and to get decorating tips. There are fascinating glimpses of the rest of the world, which is not so pleased with America, but only glimpses because we as readers only get as much as the characters get. It's a scary and all too believable, funny as hell version of the future. I loved it.
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