Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Predictably Irrational!

One of the fun benefits of working at the library is that Carla, our selection librarian, puts many of the advance reader copies she receives down in our staff room for employees to read and share. I make a pretty regular visit to the book shelves because if it great fun to read books before they are available to the public, they are often the books that the publishers are really pushing, many times the writers are going to be on book tour, and best of all, the books are free. Because they are advance reader copies, they often have typos so we are not allowed to add them to the collection, so, best of all, they are free!

Recently I picked up a book called Predictably Irrational by Dan Arielly. It's a great book for anyone that is into consumer behavior, marketing, or that just likes to read about how people think. The basic premise of the book is that humans are often very irrational but that they often they they are making rational decisions based on past history. Great book, quick read, fascinating.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Interestingly the book ha a chapter on the irrational allure of Free!

In this chapter we show that free is sometimes so tempting that people waste a lot of time and resources to get it -- making it not free at all.

In any case, I am delighted you enjoyed the book

Dan

dmavidreader said...

Dan--great to hear from you. If you might consider a visit to our library, we would love to have you speak to our readers!

dmavidreader said...

Predictably Irrational was a fun read. If you might consider a book talk at our library, please email me.