Borough President Adams judged a book by its cover — and he’s proud of it!
The Beep hoofed it over to Unnameable Books in Prospect Heights on Feb. 22, where he announced “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” as his pick for One Book, One New York — a City Hall reading initiative that asks New Yorkers to vote for their favorite of five award-winning novels and aims to get everyone in the city reading the winner at the same time.
The other books on the shortlist have their merits, but Betty Smith’s 1943 classic about a young immigrant’s struggle with poverty was the only novel that actually had “Brooklyn” in the title, according to the Beep.
“I would be lying if I stated I did not have a bias to a book that had Brooklyn in the title,” said Adams.
It’s also the only title on the lineup — which also includes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Americanah,” Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me, Paul Beatty’s “Sellout,” and Junot Diaz’s “The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao” — that Adams has actually read, and the reason he picked it up in the first place is touching.
Growing up in a four-story tenement building on Bushwick’s Gates Avenue in the 1960s, there wasn’t a whole lot of foliage around. So when he first spotted the book as a child, it wasn’t any rave reviews, or splashy cover art that drew him in — it was the title, which suggested a completely novel concept to a Kings County kid.
“Believe it or not, the idea of trees in Brooklyn seemed so far from me,” he said. “It gave me this vision that anything can grow.”
The city will announce the winning novel at a ceremony sometime in March.
But exactly how officials expect to get New Yorkers reading it is unclear — they have convinced local publishers to donate 4,000 copies of all five potential titles to libraries throughout the five boroughs, but there isn’t much else planned yet.
The city has suggested that New Yorkers use the program as an opportunity to support independent bookshops, but isn’t providing consumers with any real incentives to shop local instead of saving a buck shopping on Amazon.
Adams says he might host a book club at Borough Hall to discuss the tome, although nothing’s set in stone at this point.
You can vote for your pick for One Book, One New York here.
