Plugin Advice

Hi

Ive newly installed my first WordPress 2.3 and would like some advice on which, out of the many many plugins I should concentrate on for my needs.

Would anyone please advise on suitable, stable plugins,to meet my requirements

A newsletter
A links manager (not blogroll, my own links to sites)
Recommended Reads, (books I recommend with image , desc etc)
Events (to list my upcomming events, ideally with a widget that tracks when events have pasted, i.e shows the next five events)
A suitable 3 colomn theme that I could easily use as a template for my own 3 colomn design

Thanks for any help offered

Voddie