As with many other excellent books, Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built too came via the better half – a book that one of her colleagues mentioned as his favourite. Since solarpunk fell in the larger ambit of speculative fiction, of which I am an enthusiast, I promptly added it to my list. I rarely write a review for fiction these days, because I think each book speaks to a person differently, and sometimes even to the same person differently across time. This book is no different, so no review here. But for me, this book came at a very opportune time – it raised the same questions I had, but with a far more positive outlook. It even managed to reinforce an answer. Hence, sharing a few lines by Becky Chambers that really spoke to me.
It was in a show called Hunters that I first heard about Operation Paperclip. Even before WW 2 ended, and though there were common organisations among Allies, the race was on between the would-be victors to get Nazi science and tech to their own countries. This expanded to the Nazis who were working on such projects. Originally called Operation Overcast, the then rechristened Operation Paperclip was the US version, which ran between 1945 and 1959, and as a part of which more than 1600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from Nazi Germany to the U.S. and more often than not, given government employment. The American Dream!
Old Mill Brewing Co. popped up when we were looking for new places around our hometown – Whitefield. But we were thwarted two weeks in a row, courtesy rains! The third time wasn’t really the charm, as the 6km drive took 45 minutes! But things turned around when we finally reached there.
Since we got there relatively early in the evening, it was near empty, and we were glad to see a brewery without dirty waterbodies, loud music, and underaged kids shooting for reels! Refreshing change of scene. The place is quite huge with seating options across multiple floors.
The title – The Organized Mind, and the subtitle – Thinking straight in the age of information overload – led me to quite some expectation, which unfortunately weren’t met. A better title for the book, IMO, would have been ‘How the mind is organised’. That the book was published in 2014, when the noise levels were of a magnitude different from the current circumstances, also doesn’t help.
Some would say kids are spoilt these days. I’m not going there, but kids are definitely spoilt for choice when it comes to chasing their interests, academic pressures notwithstanding. But what’s a deep interest and what’s a fad? What’s a passion and what is a routine that has overstayed its welcome?
I thought it was an excellent reminder that not all childhood interests need to become lifelong pursuits. Maybe a reminder for adults too – both influencers suffering burnouts as well as us standard mortals. For those interests that are staying beyond their shelf lives, and for those that haven’t seen the light of day, because they are dictated by habit/self image/identity?
I wrote this on LinkedIn in the context of a Hyundai ad that ended with “Never give up on finding what you love. There’s joy in every journey.”
