012: With the City of Miami as Itself

Before I canceled my Netflix account, I was working through season one of Burn Notice on DVD.  Michael Westen's voiceovers take an already fun, witty show up to the next level of amusing.  I also like how the whole show is inadvertently (or purposefully?) a how-to guide for covert ops.  One of the local TV stations also runs back-to-back syndicated episodes on Wednesday nights, which my family has started watching with more and more dedication every week.

Having finished Twin Cities Noir, I'm reading Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem at the moment, and the main character is a private detective with the standard wry film-noir first-person narration.  Between the voice and the offbeat situations in which Conrad Metcalf finds himself, the shamus has started looking like a polished-up Michael Westen in my head.  Like so:


from Changeling, via Google


With almost every book I read, I inadvertently play casting director, which means the story plays out like a movie in my head as I work my way through.  I'm convinced this makes me enjoy a lot of books more than I would otherwise, and as a result, I probably think a lot of things I've read are better than they are, just because I've had the cast of Castle acting out the plot for me.  Or whatever.  Does everyone do that, I wonder?  Or do I just watch too much television?