Feed

Young adult books are are great for several reasons: they tend to cut straight to the point, the plot is well-paced, and there are not a lot of taboos. This book has all of that, in addition to a terrifying portrait of a future where consumerism is all people know.
Titus lives in a world where people are outfitted with a feed at a young age; the feeds are chips that are Internet/television blends that inform the owner of sales going on, how much houses cost, and the most popular shows. During spring break, Titus and his friends travel to the moon, and meet Violet, who is home-schooled. She tells them that everything broadcast on the feed is actually making them easier to sell to, and actually destroying their brains. Feeds promote lesions on the skin, which marketers instantly dub "the latest trend," scramble news messages so the owners are unaware of the global effects taking place in a world where people literally live in their own bubbles, and can actually be hacked into like any computer.
Anderson has done a masterful job of creating a futuristic world where teenagers only speak in monosyllabic words (the TV show everyone watches is called "Oh? Wow! Thing!"), and parents are as empty-headed and consumer-driven as their children. Titus is such an intriguing character, with just barely enough sense to know that something is not right in his world, but too self-conscious to rock the boat. Although the book is written in Titus' hugely limited vocabulary, one of the strengths is that, after a few paragraphs, I found myself thinking in exactly the same few words he did and still understanding the book. In Feed, corporations have taken over school, trademarked it, and students take classes to learn what kind of products they should purchase. In our own world, soda companies have installed vending machines in school hallways; Anderson's imagined world just doesn't seem too far out of the realm of possibility. Parts of it gave me chills, and the other parts made me feel very aware of the amount of stuff I buy unnecessarily. This would make a great book club book, with lots of discussion points and connections to our own reality.