A measured, unflinching look at the system of slavery and its perverted power over the souls who lived within it. It twists what is good in the world--even the love of a parent to a child is dirtied. I felt sad and angry and creeped out and frustrated and sad again. Tremendous.

I initially read this book in order to prepare for Zadie Smith's On Beauty, but I gotta say, E.M. Forster is among the best authors to write about feelings. There's always a tremulously delicate nature to his prose, reinforced by his themes on family and kindness. In his world, callousness and callowness are knee-jerk reactions that keep us all from generating empathy for each other. "Only connect..." seems like an easy thing to do, except when it isn't.

Sometime in the future I will try to read one Levithan book where he is the only author. But after reading this and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, I've come to the conclusion that there's something about Cohn and Levithan collaborations that strikes me as incredibly tedious. It's like their premises are being pitched specifically to appeal to my pop cultural predelictions, but the subpar writing and character-building makes me resent that they're trying.

The novel begins with a disaffected teenage boy roaming the The Strand bookstore a few days before Christmas. He finds a red moleskine notebook where a stranger has written bizaare instructions. Dash (the boy) decides to take on the challenge and turn the tables on the puzzlemaker at the same time by creating his own puzzles. Lily, the owner of the red notebook, is intrigued by this twist and they take turns answering each others' dares, slowly revealing their emotional lives to each other by writing on the notebook. Along the way, wacky hijinks ensue, including an arrest that ends up being humorous because they're white and affluent and their lives don't get destroyed by police overreach.

Far be it for me to ding it for an overwrought rom com premise (I do, after all, love While You Were Sleeping) but the parts of the novel where the characters gallivant around New York to fulfill the dares and hunt for clues are by far the least interesting parts of the story for me. For one, the Dash chapters give in to the temptation of making him constantly sneer at the shallow accoutrements of a consumerist Christmas season, because that's so punk rock and edgy. The writing on the notebook also became a bat-signal that says: "We're gonna talk about feelings now." in a way that felt repetitive.

The thing that I did enjoy was Lily's backstory and family life, her presentation as a Rory Gilmoresque sheltered girl with infinite good cheer. I just enjoy willfully good-natured characters a lot. Moving past the super contrived premise of the notebook, I found her interactions with her brother, his boyfriend, and everyone else in her neighborhood amusing. I also can see why she'd be fascinated by the Dash she sees in the notebook. Dash, on the other hand, felt so generic as a character that I didn't get the feeling that there were any unplumbed depths in him. He probably listens to The Shins on his iPod, enjoy Jason Schwartzman movies, and sneers at cronuts.

I like this better than Nick and Norah, but I have a feeling that these authors are just not to my taste.

I'm tempted to knock down another star because of a plot twist in the epilogue. But I'll probably have to contend with the outrage on my assessment of the third book in the series instead.

At its heart (and guts), Feed is a fast, entertaining read. But there are some dopey parts that continuously tripped me up, particularly the self-aggrandizing thread about the ~Rise of the Bloggers~ following the ~Betrayal of Mainstream Media~ as embodied by noted inciter of speciocide, The New York Times. The book is so profoundly of its time that it's cringeworthy sometimes. But if you can turn off the part of yourself that can't reconcile with a reality where trending topics don't exist, this is a great story.