It is safe to say that our billionaire mayor from Boston will not be following in the footsteps of former mayor Ed Koch when he leaves office. Where Koch has spent almost a decade now reviewing movies as a side gig (see: The Mayor at the Movies), Mike Bloomberg "once told a friend he had seen only 10 movies in his life." Make that 11—he admitted he went to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
"I loved it," Hizzoner said, before adding that "it was better to have read the novel beforehand: 'You’ve got to know the characters.'" And how he knows the characters! The mayor, who often cites the children's book Johnny Tremain as his favorite, has not only read the book and seen the recent movie, he also just watched the BBC miniseries of Tinker, Tailor. And in case you weren't clear the man is a John le Carré fan, the Times reports he also went and recommended the book to a completely confused class of 11th graders recently (he also recommended le Carré's The Honourable Schoolboy, "It’s 600 pages, it’s mostly description, there is almost nothing that happens. But it’s fascinating!"). "I like spy stuff," he said, possibly explaining all that NYPD spying that's happened under his watch.
At least the mayor, who has made education one of his key issues, is honest about not caring for fiction when he goes out and tells kids to read. "I was never good at literature," he told students recently before offering his tip on how to enjoy a good story:
"When you finish a book, any book, it’s interesting just to sit and take a couple minutes and say, 'What’d I learn?'" the mayor said. "That friend of mine who has a problem, maybe I can understand his problem a little bit better. Doesn’t mean I have to like him or anything, but being a little more sympathetic can come out of something like this."
Wonder who Bloomberg became a little more sympathetic to after he read all that le Carré?
