Feed is an amazing and horrifying story of an average gaggle of teenagers in a futuristic distopia where something akin to television and the internet intermingle through involuntary (and voluntary) media feeds in people's heads. There are a few interesting sub-plots or themes that present themselves as we learn more about this 24-hour upload device. One is that there is a digital divide, which for better or worse inhibits the feed from a small percentage of the poorer population. The other is the consumerism that is encouraged through the non-stop upload of brainwashing in the feed. People's individual likes, dislikes, purchase history and general background (a.k.a data mining) have been profiled in order to provide a continuous barrage of advertising.

The plot focuses on Titus, who falls for a girl who is very different from him and all of his friends. Violet is a sweet and unique soul who has been home-schooled her whole life and lived without the feed for most of her early childhood. She's intelligent and wants to challenge and question the feed and the world in which it has become part of normal human consciousness. Ironic that in a violent hacking incident the whole group experiences, she is the one whose mind is most damaged.

I liked Feed more as an audio experience than my previous foray into audiobooks with Uglies. I liked the reader's voice and appreciated the way the feeds were presented. You got a great sense for how the feed worked and what it contained — a little bit of everything we have in our technological landscape only continually mainlined through an eternal electronic drip.

Here are some things I pondered while "listening" to Feed — More of my personal reflections, as this is still a new thing for me.

This is a science fiction novel so there are a lot of made up words/products/activities and non-familiar names. I wanted to see how they were spelled, written and punctuated. I missed that and felt like in reading Feed those cues would have helped me understand the language better. It's a little thing, but something I felt compelled to comment on.

Another question that occurred to me while listening to Feed is how do books NOT become scripts when they are read and performed in this way. Listening to books has made me wonder if they become something else just by virtue of the medium through which they are interpreted.

So I now ride the bus three days a week. Not only do I feel very righteous about shrinking my carbon footprint, I am able to devote a considerable amount of time listening to audiobooks. Last week, I signed up for my very own Audible.com account membership and am well on my way. And as a matter of fact, I just finished Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (BTW, am I the only person who habitually calls him, Paul Westerberg–ya know, from the Replacements?).

It was read by Carine Montbertrand, and I have to say, I got a little tired of her voice. Additionally, I flat out didn't like her portrayal of the main character, Shay. But I did enjoy the story and despite how sick I am of the word "pretty," it was a fun way to pass the time standing on the bus while I drank my coffee. All in all, I thought it was a fine…read? Book?

That leads me to one of my audiobook quandaries…. and it's really bugging me. When discussing the books you listen to, Do you say "Oh totally, Uglies. I absolutely love it. I'm reading it right now." Or, " Oh, I read Uglies, it's great." Or do you stick to the truth–after all the former is sort of a lie, technically. Do you say, "I'm listening to that on my iPod right now." Or "I love that book. I listened to the audiobook version." I guess If you want to be honest you describe your experience as the ladder, but it's so clunky. I'm going to propose a new word: risten (read+listen). As in… "Ah yes, War and Peace. An excellent piece of work, I 'ristened' to it last week," or "I'm 'ristening' to War and Peace in my car on the way to work, it's fabulous. You should totally 'risten' to The Fountainhead. "

I wonder if my discomfort around the language you use to describe the audiobook thang betrays a subconscious feeling I have that I'm cheating. I'm sort of old school. It feels like I'm cutting corners. But does it matter? If I'm absorbing the story, the words, what's the problem?

I think there's a misconception that it's easier and faster to listen to a book than to read it. It isn't. There's no skimming. No speed reading. No mutttering to yourself, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yada, yada, yada…" (Flip, flip, flip.) (Not that I would ever do that.) No, it takes way longer to listen to a book than read it. Each sentence is s-p-o-k-e-n and each pause fully actualized. They're long. Uglies clocks in at about 12 hours, and I think I probably could have read it in like, 4. But alas, who has four spare hours? And that's the point. The thing that you can do while listening to a book is multi-task: Clean up the kitchen, walk, ride the bus, drive, wash your face. And while it's true you need to be doing something relatively mindless, it makes an audiobook worth its weight in gold.

For example, I'm about to go and 'risten' to Eragon while I knit a sweater for my son and wait for dinner to cook.