If we're voting, I like the "One Book" slug, too, and the computers replacing books quote.

And JenP is very gracious to offer to start collecting recs, and I think her idea email idea sounds fine.

And that is, pretty much, all I've got.

We could try to consense around 3, but I'm not sure it'd happen. We haven't been open for an hour and we've got 3 people and 4 books suggested. We wouldn't finish pimping until the 15th, and consensus, bullshit or not probably wouldn't happen until the 20th since the 16th begins a weekend.

Any objections to just throwing some in the hopper?

I have no book to recommend, so if there is anything administrative needed (collecting recs, counting votes, whatever) I can do that.

Do you think we can consense on 3 books by Thursday? 'Cause I'm gonna want to the whole month to acquire and read the first one.

If we can, yay! So far we've got 4 recs. Wolfram, do you have one you'd like to add?

I second P-C's suggestion for Remains of the Day (beautiful book!), and also throw The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant into the fray.

(Maybe we could let Wolfram have the honor of picking the very first book from our suggestions (or one of his own) so that people can get it right away, and then figure out a system to pick books 2 and 3? He had a hard proposal, and got it passed, in the face of much resistance.)

Oooh, P-C, a Lorrie Moore I haven't read! Not sure why, actually, just never got around to picking it up.

And the Hegland book sounds really interesting. This is going to be hard. There will be many lovely books to choose from, I'll wager.

Maybe email isn't necessary for collecting the recommendations? Hard to tell -- seems like we may be a smallish population, but then as Heather said we already have people making suggestions here (and yaying them!).

Wolfram, do you have one you'd like to add?

A big nope. I'm really looking forward to reading new stuff. And so far I'm 0 for 4 on the recs, so it's all working out.

Maybe email isn't necessary for collecting the recommendations?

I, for one, would rather see the recs and pimping in the thread. It's easy enough to go back and collect the recs from the posts.

Any objections to just throwing some in the hopper?

No, but I'd like to make it easier to vote if we end up consensing (or, throwing them in a hat, for that matter). That's why I think a little pimping (blurb) would be helpful. For example, aside from Remains of the Day, I don't know the other books. I'd love to know a sentence or two about what they are and, even, more, why peopel are reccing them. I figure, if we collect the title, author, blurb, then we have it all in one place whether we decide to consense, randomize or Mr. Poll.