My grandmother read one novel in her life. She told me that fact on more than one occasion and I rather suspect that she enjoyed shocking me with it. Imagine: one single book in 88 years! The much-honored volume was Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds, consumed in the wake of Richard Chamberlain doing his conflicted-man-of-the-cloth bit in the 1980s mini-series.
Dorothy enjoyed it, she said it was a good book, but didn't feel any inclination to try another one. Her tone of voice dictated the matter closed-and none of us ever dared mention having glimpsed that copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover behind the jam jars in her pantry. When pushed, Dorothy would quote her own grandmother, who was seemingly regularly given to pronouncing that, "People who read books have dirty houses."