I'd highly recommend The Well Grounded Rubyist by David Black http://www.manning.com/black2/ if you want a good intro to Ruby, I found it a much better intro than the Pickaxe
I work with David and he is totally awesome. He's giving a talk at the NYC.rb meetup on June 12 called "The Well-Grounded Nuby" which is an intro tour to Ruby. Here's the meetup link. http://www.meetup.com/NYC-rb/events/57344932/
In fact, "The Well Grounded Rubyist" is a "reworking" of "Ruby for Rails". The author mentions this relationship between the books in his "about this book" section at the beginning of "The Well Grounded Rubyist".
I found Ruby for Rails very helpful when I was getting started. It helped separate Rails "magic" from the underlying language aspects in a way that most other books did not.
I can't recommend The Well-Grounded Rubyist higher myself and totally agree regarding it's accessibility in comparison to the Pickaxe. This is the book that taught me programming.
