Charles Dickens' 200th birthday on Feb. 7 and Edith Wharton's 150th birthday on Jan. 24 got me thinking about how old famous novelists were when they died. Here are some of the longer-living ones I found:

Eudora Welty, 92 (1909-2001)
Upton Sinclair, 90 (1878-1968)
Saul Bellow, 89 (1915-2005)

People who love novels almost never stop reading them. But some of us need to occasionally take a brief break from "heavier" novels, including cherished classics and the best of modern literature.

In other words, escapist fiction is a nice substitute once in a while!

At least four of every...

Seeking some compelling mid-winter reading? Try perusing the list of books that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction! The winners, as you'll see in the links below, range from classic novels to now-obscure books.

I'd like to hear your thoughts about which Pulitzer-winning titles deserved or didn't deserve that honor...

This year marks the 600th anniversary of Joan of Arc's birth and the whatever anniversary of when America's second Gilded Age began, so it's time for... an appreciation of Mark Twain's less-famous work!

Including his novels Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and The Gilded Age.

Twain, of course, is...

During a single year of the not-great Harding presidency, four great cartoonists came into the world.

Two of those 1922-born men died recently -- "The Family Circus" creator Bil Keane in November and the Joker creator (some say co-creator) Jerry Robinson in December. "Peanuts" legend Charles M. Schulz passed away...

Some famous novelists are known for being both serious and funny. Examples include Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote, Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Charles Dickens in David Copperfield. Mr. Micawber!

Then there are stellar novelists and novels with almost no reputation for humor....

With all the bad people in real-life politics and big business, do we really want to read about bad people in novels?

It's one thing if a hateful book inhabitant is a crucial but secondary character who might serve as a foil to an appealing main character. For instance,...

As New Year's Day nears, it's time for some book-related resolutions!

1. I resolve not to get too upset that 2012 will be only the third year since 1997 without a Harry Potter novel or movie. Besides, that void frees up Lord Voldemort to be drafted as a last-minute...

I'm about to read The Age of Innocence, which reminds me that I feel guilt about the age I reached before reading a number of classic novels for the first time.

As a teen and young adult, I managed to polish off some famous books. But, for various reasons, other...

Nineteenth-century French novels have a lot to say about our 21st-century world. And I'm not just talking about Jules Verne books that predicted some of today's technological advances.

I'm also talking about Honore de Balzac's Eugenie Grandet, which features a selfish rich guy like many of the wealthy in 2011....

I didn't know until after I read his book.

When I finished Lost Boys today, I looked up Orson Scott Card on the web to learn more about him and see what other novels he has written. Lost Boys was the first Card book I ever read, and I liked...

As I write this on Thanksgiving weekend, I give thanks to the books that turn adolescent readers into adult readers. For me, it was one 19th-century novel by a woman, and one 20th-century novel by a man.

All of us who love books started with simpler fare. Perhaps it was...

As the weather turns colder, it's time to cuddle up with four things: dogs and cats, and dog and cat books.

Actually, our animal friends are not "things," which is why I love to see those charismatic critters in works of fiction and nonfiction. They bring warmth to books, and...

It's a current fact that I love historical fiction. No, not the kind that wrongly says President Obama was born outside the U.S., but the kind in novels such as Stephen King's new 11/22/63.

Why is historical fiction great? For one thing, it enables you to learn about the...

There are many ways an author can make a novel compelling. One of them is to include immigration themes.

I thought of that after recently reading three relatively recent books: Middlesex (Greece to America!), The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (the Dominican Republic to America!), and The Kite Runner...

I've never used an e-reader. There, I said it.

It's not that I don't like digital things. As you may have guessed, I blog. I also e-mail, go on Facebook, watch YouTube videos, shoot photos with a digital camera, research stuff on the web, "attend" online meetings in a...

You love novels, but sometimes things connected to them can be annoying. So, with an affectionate nod to Peeves the Poltergeist of Harry Potter, here are a few book-related pet peeves that aren't the authors' fault.

Hollywoodized book covers. When a novel is turned into a movie, the cover of...

After just finishing The House of Mirth, I'm reminded once again that many great novels don't have happy endings.

Some of the endings are totally tragic, and others offer a measure of hope after plenty of emotional or physical trauma. But few fiction classics seem to conclude in a way...

One team in baseball's postseason will win four World Series games this month, so I thought I'd take advantage of that number by naming my four favorite baseball novels.

Interestingly, all four books offer elements of fantasy and/or require suspension of reader belief. Sort of like believing that Barry Bonds,...

Now stepping into the ring: Buying Books vs. Using a Library! That bout might never make pay-per-view, but it's a contest often on the minds of avid readers.

One major positive of buying books is more money in the pockets of authors, who -- unless they're someone like Harry...