Has this happened to you?

You hear someone's name or a book title mentioned over and over and over again and you "Gee, I should check them out." And when you finally get around to it, you realized you've had one of their books, sitting on your shelf, just waiting to be read, for a while?

Being at an Ideas conference, Seth Godin's name was thrown around. A LOT. And I was like "Gee, I need to check his stuff out." His name has shown up in my "sphere" a ton of times in the last 6 weeks or so.

And then I was sitting at home today, trying to wean myself off the computer and Hulu, and realized I should go outside and read, and stop moping. And that I'd try to pick a book that I could get through today or at least in the next couple of days. I typically read on my Kindle, on the train, because I get a bit over an hour to read on the train most days, and I love not having to worry about "running out of book" while on the go. I have this stack of books that somehow made its way in to my life that I want to get through, so I figured today was as good as any.

You know what was sitting on the top of my stack of books? Poke the Box. I didn't even realize it was Seth Godin, until I picked it up. Seemed like the right book for the task, today, for so many reasons.

It's free, if you're an Amazon Prime Member and have a Kindle. Go read it. Took me less than two hours. I really recommend it. So much so that when I have new hires, I think I'm going to make them read it in their first week. Because I think it's important. It's probably the best rant you'll ever read.

Seth's writing style resonates with me, and it just served to echo a lot of the thoughts in my head from the Ideation Conference. We'll see how this goes. As soon as I pass this book on to someone else. 

For future reference, the current books I want members of my team to read:
Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman
Poke the Box, Seth Godin
Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande
I'm on the fence about including a Malcom Gladwell book on here. But maybe Blink.