Anyone wanna claim?

As I’ve blogged about before, books are a tough one for me – I always have the best intentions, WANT to read them, feel like I SHOULD.

A couple of days ago, I received one of my regular deliveries from TED. It couldn’t have come at a better time. You see, both of these are TED speakers that I have heard in the past, and both of these books are ones I downloaded “samples” of to my new iPad.

The Dan Ariely book seemed fascinating and I downloaded the full copy to my iPad. The Matt Ridley book, whilst a killer TED speech, just didn’t seem like one I’d follow through with reading. So, I deleted the file on my iPad and moved on.

When I received these in my TED Bookclub mailing, it threated to reopen the decision. You know, I WAS interested enough in the Ridley book to CONSIDER reading it, maybe now that I got a physical copy I should keep it – put it on the bookshelf.

We all know what would’ve happened. I would’ve been blogging about the Ridley book in a few months – adding it to the stack of the RID project.

It feels good to stick with this decision, and to pass this book along to someone who’ll want it…and treasure it.

Now THAT’S rational optimism.