The Couch 116: Puns Tsar Terrible...

I usually do too, but I also find them to be of better quality. This pair I'm getting is a bit above our base coverage, but not by much -- kind of middle of the road I guess.

I'm reading another one of the free Nook books I downloaded from barnes & noble, this ones not a teen one (dang it, I forgot to tell t about reading the teen books and 15's delight in them!) This writer's style reminds me very much of your posts here, SD. Especially where a character keeps saying "Oh good lord"....

I find 100% coverage amazing as here you would never get 100% coverage on anything on insurance. It may have changed on the past 5 years but last time I looked that was the way it was.

It's pretty nice. Good insurance rocks!

Our medical check-ups are covered 100% which is really nice. Dental check-ups/cleaning is 100%. Reasonable copays for everything else. Can't complain.

It won't be that way once my husband retires I am sure, but he works for a company that pays about 40% of our monthly premium which is a definite plus and so far the coverage has remained pretty reasonable. Our premium actually went down this year which hasn't happened in a long time. I expect things will change but so far, so good.

Are you going to give us the title? The Couch reading group is being slow to start Moby D, maybe we need to start with something not Moby D.

Second the motion to NOT start with Moby d

I get glass lenses (too tough on plastic). I've been told (just a couple of times over the last 40 years) that they can't (won't?) make a lens to fit my old pair. Most of the time they are happy to just do the lens.

Agree. Strongly.

I had cataract surgery in both my eyes a few years back when I was in my late 40s. They replaced my lens with something called crystalens and I did not have to wear regular glasses anymore. For the first time in 40+ years I could see distance without glasses (I wore contacts for awhile in high school and college but law school killed me with contacts and I went back to glasses). I had to do exercises to strengthen the muscles and I do have to wear reading glasses from the drug store. I never got the extra insurance for dental or eyes when I wore glasses. My health insurance covered the cataract surgery but I had to pay myself for the cost of the type of lens I chose over the regular replacement lens. Now maybe the lens I chose is more usual so it could be covered - I just don't know.

America's test kitchen reduces the juice - it looked good.

Re moby - I thought you young generation liked sushi!

I like pineapple but not cooked in cake. I have had carrot cake with pineapple chunks in it. I am not keen on the sort with coconut either - carrot cake is a cake people like to dump a lot of things into it seems.
I don't like cake with chunks of stuff in it.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/i...ke-recipe.html

http://southernfood.about.com/od/car...r/bl30626k.htm

"I don't like cake with..." BEEP BEEP BEEP DOES NOT COMPUTE!!!

v-Ger was on last night. It was nice to see Stephen Collins get blown to smithereens.

Sheesh, I am surrounded by literary cowards! I bet you guys want to start with Fifty Shades of Grey...?

Whales >> sushi? Doesn't that seem wrong? Them being mammals too and all?

Were we to decide to go whale wrangling instead of reading Moby D, though, my 19th-century whaling reading has given me a good idea of how to wrangle a whale.

(Harpoons are involved. Someone could put an eye out.)

Are you all wanting to stick with boring depressing white men from 19th century northeast america?
You could do boring white guys from Russia
Anna Karenina
or move forward in history and read
Ulysses by Joyce

Or for a woman -
The Making of Americans by Stein.

Fun for all.

I would rather eat carrot cake than read Joyce. Or Stein.

I like Tolstoy, though.

Eta: or how about Samuel Richardson's Clarissa? All 1500 pages of it.

I read clarissa in college - my entire class missed the rape.

I do love epistolary novels.
And reading Stein.
Tolstoy not so much.

Put a -beck on the end of Stein- and I will happily read the book.

I did not mind steinbeck.

Joyce! My favorite author every! I took a class in college where we just studied Yeats and Joyce.. Best class ever!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

As they said about George Bush senior:

I've overcome the intense challenges of the past two weeks and am now feeling blue.

East of Eden is one of my favorites. Not so fond of Grapes of Wrath; two pages describing a turtle crossing the road . . . and that ending. Odd book. East of Eden is quite a good read though.

Currently I'm rereading I am Malala for a teacher summer reading book group. Interesting but boggs down in a few places.

Now, an interesting non-fiction writer is Malcolm Gladwell. David and Goliath is on our summer reading list. Interesting examples and commentary on how underdogs came through successfully and triumphed.

I still remember that turtle crossing from AP english.
Many many years ago.
That and the what shall I learn of beans or beans of me from Walden's pond.

My son had to read it last summer so I reread it along with him. Didn't like it any better.

My mother gave me her old bookclub editions of a Steinbeck collection. It's sitting on my shelf. I teach Of Mice & Men which my students LOVE or hate to love because of the ending(either strong emotion is a success in my eyes). I wish I could teach East of Eden, but somehow the whole falling in love with a prostitute thing probably wouldn't pass muster with the school board. I do recommend it for individual and small group reading though; I just can't full-class teach it. Students do like it.

I remember the s and m from East of Eden because I read it for the first time when I was about 13 (I read all of Steinbeck that year) and it was a quite different world from anything I knew about.