The Most Populous Borough

Don't you just love when you read a book and you can envision the film version as you are reading? Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn was just that type of book for me.  While I wouldn't necessarily say that it was the best book I have ever read, the characters near-absurdities made them somehow realistic and endearing to me.  Edward Norton must have seen the same film reel spinning through my mind when I read the book because his version of the detective fiction a la film is due out in 2013.  I am secretly hoping that he applies some of the film techniques used in American History X to this film.  In my imaginative in-my-mind-cinematography, there are plenty of scenes in black and white...

While the actual setting of St. Vincent's Home for Boys, where the main character Lionel spent his childhood, is in Brooklyn Heights, which doesn't really evoke the imagery of the book that I pictured while reading it, I do love the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood.  I could grab a cup of coffee and easily spend an entire afternoon walking the promenade. I also especially love the area around halloween when those blessed brownstone owners deck their stoops in pumpkins and gaudy halloween skeletal displays.

photo via this adorable blog

So the upshot of this is...read Motherless Brooklyn and then visit Brooklyn!