Last night, a couple dozen people gathered in Elliott Bay Book Company's cafe to drink wine, talk about books, and prepare for their part in World Book Night, which happens on Monday, April 23rd. These people had volunteered to give away 20 books to nonreaders, in the hopes of promoting "the value of reading, of printed books, and of bookstores and libraries." 500,000 books will be given away around the country. Elliott Bay manager Tracy Taylor gave a short speech thanking all the organizations that volunteered time and materials—publishers, UPS, Ingram book distribution—to get the tower of free books to the store on time.

As people waited in line to receive their boxes, they talked eagerly about their plans for Monday. A woman named Janna who commutes to work by bicycle is going to hand copies of The Book Thief—a book she feels "very passionate about"—to other cyclists on her route. Lots of people chose Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian: One woman is going to hand her copies out to commuters and pedestrians in the International District, another is going to deliver a box to Tent City, other boxes are going to schools in West Seattle and the east side. A longtime bookseller is going to give away his copies of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to friends in his softball league. Someone else is going to deliver copies of Octavia Butler's Kindred to a Capitol Hill nightspot, because he thinks Butler doesn't get enough respect as a great local writer.

And so. Now I've got a box full of 20 copies of John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany. It's a book that I give to people who haven't read in a long time; something about it tends to draw nonreaders in. But I have no idea where I should hand out copies of this book on Monday. Does anyone on Slog have any ideas about who should get these books? If you leave a great suggestion in the comments, I'm happy to deliver these books on behalf of Slog, and I'll report back on how the giving went. I'd like for these books to get in as many nonreaders' hands as possible, and I could use some good advice about how to make that happen.