I'll accept that. My books must be wrong. I wasn't sure about the
novice class, my study books still has it listed as a class one can
still get.

Things change over the years . I think the major change was in April of
2000. Not sure about the date, but For current info you may want to go here
for the current classes of license.

http://www.arrl.org/FandES/ead/classes.html

Throw the books away and get a new set as they appear to be out of date.
The question pool has also changed somewhat in the last year or two.