Novels or Short Stories?

After spending a week without TV, computer or books I've had time to come to a few mundane conclusions about life that I'd like to share. A friend of mine recently had a slight accident and she said to me "I thought I was going to be a short story rather than a novel." For those of you who don't know, I work at a library where we mostly talk in literary terms like that. :) And although short stories can beautiful little gems in a small setting, I tend to like a fat, full blown, wide ranging, in your face, novel. I want to read it all - the good guys and the bad guys, the happy parts and the sad, all the parts that make up a story. And it takes more than a  few pages to tell me about it. Life should be a novel not a short story or a novella...what about you? Novel or short story?