Tag: Books

Can Rereading THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ Help Me Remember What It Was Like to Be Ten Years Old?

by James Wallace Harris, 12/5/25

While watching Wicked, I struggled to recall the excitement I felt when I first read the Oz books at age 10 back in the summer of 1962. I wanted to know whether the fantasy world Wicked created matched the one L. Frank Baum created in his fourteen Oz novels.

The barrier to making this comparison is memory. Memories are highly unreliable. Plus, we overwrite our memories every time we recall them, so am I really remembering 1962, or just the last time I thought about reading the Oz books as a kid?

Like most of my brain excavations, I have to rely on logic and deduction instead. I also look for corroborating evidence. I spent many days on this problem, and here are my results.

The Oz books were the first novels I discovered on my own. For various reasons, I concluded this was the summer between the 5th and 6th grades. My family lived on base at Homestead Air Force Base, and I found the Oz books in the children’s wing of the base library. They were old and worn.

The first novel I remember is Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, which my mother read to me in the third grade. I started using libraries in the fourth grade, but read nonfiction books about airplanes, space travel, cars, and animals.

I remember roaming up and down the fiction section at the base library and discovering the Oz books. I had no idea who L. Frank Baum was, nor did I have any idea when they were written. I didn’t know about copyright pages or genres. I saw “Oz” on the spines and connected those books to the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, which I had seen on television every year since the 1950s.

I did not know the word fantasy. I doubt I understood the concept of fiction. In other words, these books were an exciting discovery. To compound that excitement, they were all set in the same fictional universe. They were my Harry Potter books. L. Frank Baum had tremendous world-building skills.

Analytically, I know that at ten, I didn’t know much about the world. My vocabulary was limited. And I was unaware of most concepts and abstractions. My previous beliefs in fantasy – Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy had caused me great embarrassment in first grade when a girl called me a baby for mentioning them. I was five, she was six.

In other words, I knew Oz did not exist, even though Baum created so many wonderful details to make it believable. I remember wanting Oz to exist, but I knew it didn’t. I don’t think I grasped the idea of fantasy at that time. All I knew was that the books created an artificial reality in my mind that was mesmerizing.

Watching Wicked and then rereading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz this week let me compare the two versions of Oz, but I couldn’t compare my initial reactions. Wicked is quite colorful, creative, and contains many elements of the original stories, but it no longer worked on me as the Oz books had in 1962. And that’s to be expected, since I’m 74, long past the age for fairytales.

My quest changed. I now wanted to know how my ten-year-old self saw the world. Rereading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz gave me very few clues.

My contemplations led me to some ideas, though. I have damn few memories of life before age five. I have zillions of memories dating from age five to twelve. I started thinking about them, and a revelation came to me.

Before age five, I theorize our minds are like LLMs (large language models). Those AIs can take in information and react to it, but they are unaware of the world. After five, but before puberty, we develop some self-awareness, but it’s very limiting. It isn’t until around twelve or thirteen that we start thinking for ourselves.

Here’s my main bit of evidence. As a child, my mother told me about God and took my sister and me to Sunday School and church. I just accepted what I was told. But when I was twelve, I started thinking about what they were telling me about religion. I didn’t buy it. I considered myself an atheist by 1964, when I was thirteen, maybe fourteen.

In my thirties, when I was working in a library, I came across an article that said that some librarians in the 1950s felt the Oz books gave children unrealistic expectations about life, and pulled the books from their shelves.

When I read that, I knew it had been true for me. The Oz books led me to science fiction, a genre that also inspired unrealistic expectations regarding the future that have proven to be unrealistic.

Here’s the thing: I was being told two fantasies at age ten. The first was from The Bible, and the second from the Oz books. Looking back, I see that my young self began to reject religion at age ten because I preferred the stories from L. Frank Baum. I wasn’t aware that I was comparing two fantasies; I just preferred one over the other.

Then I discovered science fiction. Concurrently, I was also discovering science. That gave me the illusion that science fiction was reality-based. When I consciously rejected religion, I thought I was choosing science. However, in recent decades, I’ve realized I had substituted science-fictional fantasies for religious fantasies.

I realize now that the Oz books had the power of Bible stories on me at age ten. The reason why so many people are true believers as adults is that they were programmed as children. Wicked doesn’t have that kind of power over me today. I can’t remember what that power felt like, but I do remember that for a few weeks in 1962, the ideas in the Oz books set my mind on fire. Rereading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz did not reignite that fire because I’m no longer a believer in anything.

I’ve often wondered if I hadn’t been lied to about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, and thus had not experienced humiliation at discovering they were lies, and if I also hadn’t discovered Oz books, would I have accepted the Bible stories as truth as a kid and believed them now?

JWH

Reading With a Purpose

by James Wallace Harris, 11/12/25

I used to keep up with the world by watching NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, reading The New York Times on my iPhone, and bingeing YouTube videos. I felt well-informed. That was an illusion.

I then switched to reading The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and Harper’s Magazine. I focused on the longer articles and developed the habit of reading one significant essay a day. That has taught me how superficial my previous methods were at informing me about what’s going on around the world. Television, the internet, and newspapers were giving me soundbites, while articles provide an education.

However, I still tend to forget this deeper knowledge just as quickly. I don’t like that. I feel like I learn something significant every day. What I’m learning feels heavy and philosophical. However, it drives me nuts that I forget everything so quickly. And I’m not talking about dementia. I think we all forget quickly. Just remember how hard it was to prepare for tests back in school.

I’ve watched dozens of YouTube videos about study methods, and they all show that if you don’t put information to use, it goes away. Use it or lose it. I’ve decided to start reading with a purpose.

At first, I thought I would just save the best articles and refer to them when I wanted to remember. That didn’t work. I quickly forget where I read something. Besides, that approach doesn’t apply any reinforcing methods.

I then thought about writing a blog post for each article. It turns out it takes about a day to do that. And I still forget. I needed something simpler.

I then found Recall AI.

It reads and analyzes whatever webpage you’re on. Providing something like this for today’s article by Vann R. Newkirk II, “What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century:”

Recall allows me to save this into a structure. But again, this is a lot of work and takes a lot of time. If I were writing an essay or book, this would be a great tool for gathering research.

Recall is also great for understanding what I read. Helpful with quick rereading.

This morning, I got a new idea to try. What if I’m trying to remember too much? What if I narrowed down what I wanted to remember to something specific?

Within today’s article, the author used the term “climate gentrification” referring to neighborhoods being bought up because they were safer from climate change, and thus displacing poor people. The article mentions Liberty City, a poor neighborhood in Miami, with a slightly higher elevation, bought up by developers moving away from low-lying beachfront development.

I think I can remember that concept, climate gentrification. What if I only worked on remembering specific concepts? This got me thinking. I could collect concepts. As my collection grew, I could develop a classification system. A taxonomy of problems that humanity faces. Maybe a Dewey Decimal system of things to know.

I use a note-taking system called Obsidian. It uses hyperlinks to connect your notes, creating relationships between ideas. I could create a vault for collecting concepts. Each time I come across a new concept, I’d enter it into Obsidian, along with a citation where I found it. That might not be too much work.

I picked several phrases I want to remember and study:

  • Climate gentrification
  • Heat islands
  • Climate dead zones
  • Insurance market collapse
  • Climate change acceleration
  • Economic no-go zones
  • Corporate takeover of public services
  • Climate change inequality
  • Histofuturism
  • Sacrifice zones
  • Corporate feudalism

Contemplating this list made me realize that remembering where I read about each concept will take too much work. I have a browser extension, Readwell Reader, that lets me save the content of a web page. I could save every article I want to remember into a folder and then use a program to search for the concept words I remember to find them.

I just did a web search on “climate gentrification” and found it’s already in wide use. I then searched for “corporate feudalism,” and found quite a bit on it too. This suggests I’m onto something. That instead of trying to remember specifically what I read and where, I focus on specific emerging concepts.

Searching on “histofuturism” brought up another article at The Atlantic that references Octavia Butler: “How Octavia Butler Told the Future.” Today’s article by  Vann R. Newkirk II is also built around Octavia Butler. This complicates my plan. It makes me want to research the evolution of the concept, which could be very time-consuming.

The point of focusing on key concepts from my reading is to give my reading purpose that will help me remember. But there might be more to it. Concepts are being identified all the time. And they spread. They really don’t become useful until they enter the vernacular. Until a majority of people use a phrase like “climate gentrification,” the reality it points to isn’t visible.

That realization reinforces my hunch to focus on concepts rather than details in my reading. Maybe reading isn’t about specific facts, but about spreading concepts?

JWH

I Find This Very Disturbing

by James Wallace Harris, 11/7/25

I watched two YouTube videos yesterday that disturbed me. Both were about the impact of AI. The first was “How What I Do Is Threatened by AI” by Leo Notenboom. Leo has a website where he answers technical questions. He also makes videos about each problem. His traffic is down because many people are turning to AI to answer their technical questions. Leo eloquently discusses what this means to his business in this video. Asking AIs for help will impact many online companies, including Google. I already prefer to ask CoPilot to look something up for me rather than Googling it.

The next video was even more depressing. Julia McCoy reports “AI Just Killed Video Production: The 60-Second Revolution Nobody Saw Coming.” New tools allow anyone to produce videos featuring computer-generated people or cartoon characters who talk with computer-generated lip-synced voices. I’m already seeing tons of these, and I hate them. McCoy points out that old methods of video production required the skills of many different people, taking days, weeks, or months to produce. Those jobs are lost.

I love seeing little short videos on the web. I’ve always admired how ordinary people can be so creative. I saw YouTube and other sites giving millions of people opportunities to create a money-making business.

I’m often dazzled by computer-generated content. It is creative. But I don’t care about giving computers jobs. I admire people for their creative efforts.

Technology allowed millions of people to produce creative content. That was already overwhelming. I’m not sure if the world needs hundreds of millions of people with minimal ability producing zillions of creative works.

For example, I admire a handful of guys who review audiophile equipment. That handful does high-quality work. Then dozens of audiophiles produce so-so videos. I sometimes watch them, but usually not. Now, YouTube is flooded with videos reviewing audiophile equipment by computer-generated hosts with computer-generated voices, scraping information off the web, and using stock video for visuals. It sucks. It’s a perfect example of enshitafication and AI slop.

I’m not completely against AI. I ask AIs for help. I’m glad when AI does significant work. For example, just watch this video for 15 mind-blowing examples of AI successes:

However, we need to set limits. I love funny cat videos. But I don’t want to see funny cat videos generated by AI. I want to see real cats. If I watch a video of a pretty woman or a beautiful nature scene, I want to believe I’m seeing something that exists in reality. If I’m watching a funny cartoon, I want to know a human thought up the words and drew the pictures. Prompt engineering is creative, maybe even an emerging art form, but computers can generate infinities. Real art is often defined by limitations.

I admire people. I admire nature. Sure, I also admire stuff computers create, but when I do, I want to know that it was a work of a computer. Don’t fool with my sense of reality.

Sometimes, I do love doomscrolling. And I love watching YouTube videos for hours at a time. And I love wasting time on Facebook before going to bed. But all the AI sloop is spoiling it for me. What I really loved about all that content was admiring human creativity and natural beauty. I want to see the best, even if it’s produced by a computer. What spoils it is all the AI slop, poorly produced human-created content, and too much computer-produced content.

That’s why I’m returning to magazines. A magazine is limited in scope. Editors must curate what is put into the limited number of pages. Facebook, YouTube, etc., would be much better if they had editors.

I enjoyed TV the most in my life when there were only three channels. The best time in my life for music was when there were only two Top 40 AM channels. I liked reading science fiction far better when I just subscribed to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Galaxy, and Analog.

I’m not against AI. I’m just against too much of it.

JWH

Reading at 13 vs. 73

By James Wallace Harris, 10/19/25

At thirteen, I read books entirely differently than I do now at seventy-three. I think everyone does, but it’s not apparent why. Our memory gives us the illusion that we’ve always been the same person. But if we think about it, there is plenty of evidence that we couldn’t have been.

I’ve been thinking about the difference between my younger reading self and my older reading self while writing a review of The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov for my other blog. Every so often, I reread a book I read as a teenager. For some books, it’s a nostalgic return to a familiar, comfortable place. For most books, it’s just vague recollections.

My first realization from trying to reconstruct my reading mind at age 13 was to remember that I read very fast. I consumed books like potato chips. Reading was like casually watching TV. Words just flowed past my eyes, and I didn’t always pay attention to every word. I just read to find out what happened.

I have a fond memory of reading The Foundation Trilogy, but a limited one. I liked the idea of a galactic empire in decline. However, the only chapter I can remember is the first one, “The Psychohistorians.” It wasn’t until decades later that I learned that the trilogy was a fix-up novel based on nine stories running from short stories to novellas.

Thinking about it now, I realize that most of the ideas in the book didn’t mean much to me at 13. I had not studied or read about the Roman Empire, Asimov’s inspiration. Actually, I probably didn’t know what an empire was either. Nor did I understand all the references to nobility, aristocracy, and politics.

As a teenager, I mostly read science fiction books. I did read some popular science books too. My awareness of the world and my vocabulary were limited. However, I didn’t know that. And I wasn’t the kind of person who looked up words I didn’t know. What’s weird is that I was a kind of know-it-all.

One way to judge my teenage brilliance was that my favorite TV show at the time was Gilligan’s Island. When I catch that show today, I can only assume I was brain-dead back then.

I’ve tried to reread The Foundation Trilogy twice now. The first time was in 2015, and now in 2025. In both cases, I could only finish the first book of the trilogy. I loved the first story, but with each additional story, I detested them more.

At first, I thought that Asimov’s most famous books were just bad. But I’ve known people smarter than me, and just as old, who say they still loved the Foundation series. One woman in our reading group said the Foundation stories were a great comfort to reread. And I recently heard that twenty million copies of the series have been sold.

Not only was my current reading self different from my younger reading self, but I’m out of step with millions of readers. This got me thinking about the different modes of reading.

I think the most basic mode is just to let fiction flow over you. You read whatever pleases you. And you don’t think about why.

Then, as we age, we become more judgmental. We learn more about life and reading. We develop a process of natural selection by rejecting what we don’t like. We don’t think much about why we don’t like what we don’t like. We just evolve into a reading machine that knows what it likes.

Two other reading modes are: English teachers or literary critics. These are very critical modes, and often they take the fun out of reading. I think as I’ve gotten older, my reading habits have taken on a bit of these two modes. While in them, it’s all too easy to shoot Asimov down.

However, I’ve discovered another mode recently when I read “Foundation” for the fourth time. “Foundation” was the first story published in the series in 1942. While reading this story yet again, I kept admiring Asimov for where he succeeded and not where he failed.

In my rereadings, I’ve always come to the series wanting to love it. And I’ve always been disappointed by how much I didn’t. But with this reading, I worked to think like Asimov. What was he trying to do, and how did he go about doing it?

I’m in the process of documenting this for my other blog, Classics of Science Fiction. I’m writing this now because the other post is going to take a long while to complete.

I never would have put this much effort into reading a story when I was a teen. Or any time before I was 73.

One reason I dislike this story in recent years is my skepticism. I don’t believe humans will ever travel to the stars, much less form a galactic empire. Another reading mode I’m trying to develop is to read with the mind of a person from when the story was first published.

Trying to read like Asimov thought and how science fiction fans felt in 1942 is difficult. I’m reminded of Samuel R. Delany’s concepts of simplex, complex, and multiplex that he described in his story Empire Star. I started out as a simplex reader and eventually evolved into a complex one. Now I’m moving into a multiplex reader.

Multiplex thinking often involves holding contradictory viewpoints. I really dislike the Foundation stories. But if I work at it and look at them in just the right way, I can like them too. It’s hard. It’s a Sisyphean struggle learning to admire something that triggers so many annoyances, but I’m working on it.

JWH

Why We Fail As Individuals – Case 1

by James Wallace Harris, 10/7/25

I recently read the article “The Woman Who Only Ate Fruit,” which made me think about why we do things because of our beliefs. The piece was about a Polish woman, Karolina Krzyzak, who died at a resort in Bali because she believed in only eating fruit. It turns out that Bali is a popular destination for people following a vegan lifestyle. Krzyzak followed an even more restrictive diet than veganism, where people only ate fruit.

For some reason, Krzyzak believed that following a fruitarian diet would lead to health and happiness. She had a small following on the Internet as an influencer and hoped to meet other more famous influencers in Bali. However, she soon died after getting there. She was just 27, and weighed 27 kilos, which is slightly less than 60 pounds.

Eating disorders are far from uncommon, but the article didn’t focus on Krzyzak having a medical issue. Instead, it focused on her following influencers on the Internet.

Are eating disorders caused by beliefs or a physiological condition? Are delusions mental or physical? Like many people with an eating disorder, Krzyzak was concerned with her appearance. I believe most people assume culture imposes that on us. But does it?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. Every day, the news brings me stories about delusional people. It makes me feel that everyone is delusional, in one or more ways. I don’t exclude myself.

On the surface, it appears our delusions come from what we believe. And we often judge people’s actions by what they claim to believe. It’s quite easy to say Krzyzak died because she thought only eating fruit would sustain her. But are beliefs really that powerful? History is full of accounts of famines that suggest something different.

People will eat almost anything when they are starving. Wouldn’t Krzyzak’s body have compelled her to eat something rather than starve to death? Are beliefs more powerful than biological drives?

Eating disorders obviously have a biological connection. But what about something that doesn’t? For instance, conspiracy theories. I believe most people think beliefs are completely derived from thinking and thoughts. What if they’re not? What if people prone to conspiracy theories have a biological reason why they embrace delusional theories?

Could there be something in our biology that predisposes us to be more conservative or liberal? I have no idea. I’m just thinking out loud.

If beliefs can change us, why do so few believers change their beliefs? You’d think beliefs would be open to logic and new evidence. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Many people tried to convince Krzyzak that her beliefs were wrong with strong evidence, but she wouldn’t change.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that humans are causing climate change, but millions of people refuse to believe that evidence. Is that a logical decision, or a biological reaction? We often use the term “gut reaction” to explain why we think something.

If we’re genetically programmed to perceive reality in certain ways, can any amount of logic or evidence change a person’s perceptions?

I feel like I have changed my beliefs hundreds of times due to new knowledge, and I know other people who claim their beliefs are open to persuasion. Is that a delusion on my part? A possible answer might be that some people are open to change, and others aren’t. I need to research that. I bet scientists have studied that.

I used to believe we could create a sane society if we all worked together to form an enlightened consensus. I doubt that now. The world seems to be going insane despite what we learn. The only way to have hope is to recognize our own delusions and change the way we act. But is that even possible?

I don’t think so if our delusions are tied to our biology.

JWH