The age of oneiric culture ("Feed" by M.T. Anderson)

In M. T. Anderson's fictional world (set a century or two into the future), everyone is connected by an internet-like web called "the feed". The main difference - "the feed" is an integral part of your body. Imagine having a wikipedia inside your brain. "Telepathic" communication with everyone who is currently online. (the "currently online" part refers to basically everyone who is awake and not heavily "damaged"). People talk less and less, and language begins to degrade. Written word is almost non-existent. Children no longer need to learn (as we know it today) in schools - not even how to read.

It’s more now, it’s not so much about the educational stuff but more regarding the fact that everything that goes on, goes on on the feed. All of the feedcasts and the instant news, that’s on there, so there’s all the entertainment ... like their favorite feedcast, this show called "Oh? Wow! Thing!", which has all these kids like us who do stuff but get all pouty, which is what the girls go crazy for, the poutiness.

But the braggest thing about the feed, the thing that made it really big, is that it knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are. It can tell you how to get them, and help you make buying decisions that are hard. Everything we think and feel is taken in by the corporations, mainly by data ones like Feedlink and OnFeed and American Feedware, and they make a special profile, one that’s keyed just to you, and then they give it to their branch companies, or other companies buy them, and they can get to know what it is we need, so all you have to do is want something and there’s a chance it will be yours.

Semper Augustus ("The Fault in our Stars" by John Green)

John Green craze has caught on wildly recently, and all the cool kids are reading his novels. Especially with the insane attention that the TFioS movie has received globally. I honestly do like John's books, but it becomes difficult to think critically of his work with all this fog of fandom-created attention and blind praise.

To be honest, my favorite John Green book (so far) is "Paper Towns". It speaks to me on a personal level, but I also think that of all the John Green books, it is the most well rounded one, as well as "the most important" one (although I don't like thinking about books as important).

I should also mention that I am a huge John (and Hank) fan. I consider myself a part of the Nerdfighter community, and I normally do my best to spread the awesomeness of the vlogbrothers as far and wide as I can. All that said, I'll start the review. My feelings about this book are generally positive, but it does have some serious shortcomings. As always, if you disagree on anything, please feel obligated to mention it in the comments. :)

"Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.” Easy enough to say when you’re a Roman nobleman (or Shakespeare!), but there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars." -Peter Van Houten

The book tells the story of about one year in the life of Hazel Grace - a stage IV cancer patient, who is kept alive by an experimental (and fictional) drug for an unpredictable amount of time. For the largest part of the book, she interacts romantically with a cancer survivor (and amputee), Augustus Waters. TFioS is a cancer story. It is, but it's not a regular cancer story. It gets down and dirty with the disease on several levels - there are physical, emotional and social aspects of the sickness in all their gory details, and at times it gets really difficult to read. There is no sense of the protagonist reaching up to an angelic level of consciousness, simply based she will die sooner than she "ought to" (by our standards).