Annie, I've got to agree. I enjoyed some of Moby Dick, but didn't find it to be a page-turner. In fact, I preferred the Wishbone version my kids had when they were younger (hanging my head in disgrace!). As many of you ladies who have suggested Austen, I have to say that both my DDs had Austen assigned in Lit class and hated it. Broke my heart, because I loved them and read them again and again as an undergrad. I don't know why, but my girls don't even like the movie versions. I thought for sure that Du Maurier would succeed where Austen had failed with DD2, only to find that she didn't care for Rebecca or Jamaica Inn, either. I can't fathom it. I was passionate about Nectar in a Sieve and Things Fall Apart as a young adult, and neither of my girls cared for them, even though they read non-fiction on the same topics greedily. As happy as I am when one of my girls loves a book that I loved, too, it makes me sad when they don't. I spent so many happy hours with British novels and by and large, they flop with my daughters. I won't give up trying, though!

Vee -- Good question. What MAKES a work a novel? Is it length? Content? Lack of illustrations? Lack of "words" (shall we call them "pseudo-words"?) such as "splat" or "aarrgghh"? Are we to constrain the term "novel" to merely works that are predominantly comprised of text? What if a work had one or two illustrations? Shall we consign such works to the bonfires of the "non-novel"? Of course, if a work had equal parts illustration and text, what shall we call those? Picture books? Half-novels? Literature for the illiterate? Yes vee, graphic novels are just picture books with few or no words. And you are correct -- those of us who purchase such works are lookers and not readers. You see, we don't really know how to read anything other than large, stylized but emotive printed text like "yeek" or "aargh" or "splat". These terms, by the way, follow a unique canon of agreed upon words, conventions, pictures, exclamations, and sock colors that all graphic novels MUST abide by. If they don't abide by them, then they can't be called graphic novels. It is put out by the Graphic Novel Code Authority and all graphic novel purchasers are REQUIRED to buy a copy otherwise they won't understand what's going on (after all, the medium and the paucity of words does not lend itself to expression). A select and secret committee of graphic novel artists and writers get together every full moon to discuss the entries in the canon and they burn their notes afterwards. If the smoke arising from the fire is purple, it means that they have a new definition but if the smoke is colored green, it means that they couldn't agree on a definition or whether to order subs or wraps for lunch. As a sampling of such terms and their agreed upon definitions, here are a few : yeek - a codeword for something icky -- as in when someone sees a mouse, you see the term "yeek" with the character pointing at the offending item/creature aargh - in graphic novels, this is placed in a panel with a stricken character as a form of extreme unction signifying that the character is about to shuffle off this mortal coil (or is in the process of shuffling off but can't seem to figure out where he left his house keys especially when the cabbie's waiting at the door) splat - a very old and respected brand of cushion that used to buy hidden advertising space in comic books. It is used to signify mushy things suddenly decelerating against a non-yielding surface. The term has migrated to the graphic novel space in honor of the company's previous support of the graphic arts. Unfortunately, the financial support that they provided stopped when the company went bankrupt following a bank run in Honduras after a bizarre banking scandal. The company's employees had discovered that when the company said it was investing their 401k into CDs, the company really WAS investing in compact disks manufactured in Honduras. The company CEO subsequently disappeared but is...

Yesterday I re-read Ford's The Good Soldier. The last time I read it was in graduate school, many years ago. What an absolutely fascinating case of an unreliable narrator! And a good study of the stolid English upper class that so intrigues the American. I had forgotten the mad Nancy's single and utterly appropriate word toward the end: "shuttlecocks"!

I certainly did better than usual on the book-front this Christmas. From the DH I had asked for Katherine Swynford by Alison Weir. I gave the DD Selective Memory by the well-known English journalist Kathleen Whitehorn . . to be read by me later! From an American friend Memories of Times Past a collection of stories/articles on the slower pace of US life in years gone by. From a US Aunt In the Shadow of the Blue Ridge by VA writer Carolyn Feagans (Mary, do you know her work?) and finally from the boyfriend of the DD Roy Strong's A Little History of the English Country Church. I must say these books press all the right buttons; I can see those I have from the library going back unread.