[Haskell-beginners] read

Hi, I'm having a problem with the read function. I thought it took a string and converted it into a value (if there is a conversion). But it doesn't seem to work for me on GHCi Prelude> read "123" *** Exception: Prelude.read: no parse Prelude> read (show 123) *** Exception: Prelude.read: no parse There must be something trivial that I'm missing. Thanks. *-- Russ Abbott*