Okay, I sent out my solicitation today. Here’s the form letter part of it, which I sent to everyone who might not know about the whole 43 Things thing.

I’ve been doing this goal setting and accomplishing crap for the last year because of this job thing, and it’s sorta working out for me. I jumped out of a plane, took a photography course, mastered chopsticks, kept a houseplant alive for the first time, saw the northern lights, recorded a solo album in a month, and ate seven Saltines within sixty seconds. Actually I didn’t do the last one, but I witnessed all my coworkers make their own attempts, and I was very proud of them. They are achievers!So I have a bunch of explicit goals and an unlisted minimalist self-improvement program going on at the same time which partly involves reading more. I thought it would be fun to drop a line to each of my most bookish friends and find out, according to just their own tastes or in combination with their sense of me, what is the one book I absolutely MUST read. It can be modern or classic, deep or shallow, fiction or philosophy, secular or sacred, fluffy or arcane. I don’t give a crap. Tell me what to read – one book – and I’ll read it. Thanks for your help…

With a few responses in already, I’m running at a 50% pre-ownership rate on the recommended books. These people must know me pretty well. That’ll save me the inconvenience of having to waste energy acquiring the books, but if this continues, it could seriously undermine my intent to combine this goal with start using the library. Alas.