let's get it started

(Yes, I think I'm hilarious if I can title a blog in such a way as to leave a song stuck in your head, dear reader. How to get rid of the song, you ask? I suggest Yellow Submarine, of course. Or maybe Sarah Silverman, since you can find this virtually everywhere.)

So, I'm just 60 pages into What is the What, and I'm torn.

It's written so well, but somehow seems like a slow start. It's hard to call it a slow start when the main character is bound and robbed in his American apartment -- I'm not ruining anything for you, fellow book club members, as this happens in the first 10 pages -- but I really want to get to Africa. I want to get to what happens to the Sudanese Lost Boys, to the story. I'm feeling slightly sidelined by the main character's memories of his daydreams from when he was a child.

Also, every time I read the words "TV Boy," I think of "Sick Boy." And then I think of Ewan McGregor (but not, ironically, Jonny Lee Miller), and then I've lost focus altogether.

Where was I? What was I saying?

Hm. In other news....

• Alice Hoffman has a new book coming out this spring. This is very exciting. I love Hoffman; she can make a strawberry seem fascinating, mysterious and somehow ghostly. A summer's day, in her hands, is shadowed by danger. A clear night is a dream. The moon has power. I can't wait to read this.
• While I have given up on Jennifer Crusie's blog, I appreciate it when an author has a full list of upcoming projects.
• I can find nothing new on another favourite author, Ann-Marie MacDonald. This makes me sad.
• Quarterlife apparently did very poorly in its television premiere last week. I didn't watch it either, but that's mostly because I'm addicted to its internet presence. I was especially addicted during the writer's strike, but even now I tune in every Sunday and Thursday. Even if it's horrifically overdramatic at times. But I think the hero and heroine, Dylan and Eric, remind me so much of people I've known (and The Sweet Edge, actually) and been and mocked that I can't help but enjoy.