May 2004 – Priscilla Spencer

&ltrant&gt

Okay. My sister recently got into a car accident. She’s more-or-less okay (she hurt her shoulder pretty badly, but it should be prefectly healed in the next couple of weeks), but her car was pretty much totalled. Therefore, it’s time for the Spencer family to discuss new cars.

Now, before all this happened, we had pretty much decided that our next car was going to be a hybrid. I’ve been pushing the Prius for years; it’s the car I really wanted when we went shopping for me three years ago, but my parents insisted we get a tank for my first car. As there were no hybrid SUVs on the market back then, I became Part of The Problem with a monstrous 17.3mpg behemoth, now dubbed “Saruman¹.” As my Dad refuses to drive my car when I’m in college for reasons I cannot fathom (in favor of his neolithic Cadillac that reeks of exhaust fumes), we were hoping that if Dad didn’t want to drive my car, he could drive a new car of his own–hopefully a hybrid–and we could sell the Cadillac either for parts or to someone without olfactory glands.

¹ Partly for its “mind of metal and wheels,” part for its reckless abuse of nature, and part because it’s played by Christopher Lee.

But now, one unprotected left turn later, my sister is next in line. My sister really wants another SUV, but as she seems to place aesthetics over environmental friendliness (I adore my sister beyond words, but you don’t always have to agree with those you love), I don’t imagine she would necessarily choose an SUV hybrid like the Ford Escape, Toyota Highlander, or Lexus RX-400h. And those three are all 2005 models anyway, so they’re not even on the market yet.

My mom came up with the perfect solution. My sister drives the marginally less neolithic minivan (which we used for carpooling and have kept out of habit) for the next three months, then when I go back to Philly, she drives my car. I’m not coming home for Thanksgiving, and then over Christmas, we could just lease a car for the weeks I’ll be home. Perfect. And even perfecter (yes, that’s now a word), by the time I get home for Spring Break or next Summer Vacation, the new eco-friendly SUVs will be out, and we can reconsider the new car issue.

Sure, the minivan isn’t the most fun car to drive in the world, but it’s only three months. I drove it far longer than three months when I was learning to drive. And my sister said herself that she doesn’t want to be one of those girls that responds to an accident “Oh, I totalled my car, let’s just get a new one!”, and this would solve that, too. Another bonus is that it means we wouldn’t have to get a new car right away, giving my dad a chance to be in a more stable financial position. He recently lost his two biggest clients, and as the real estate market is still in dire straits, he hasn’t had much luck securing new clients for the space.

*dreamy* Mmm, wouldn’t it be nice if Kerry gave a tax rebate to families that drive hybrid cars? To counteract Bush’s moronic tax rebate for companies that bought SUVs? Mmm, Kerry ’04.

*realistic* So yeah. Everybody wins! My car gets used while I’m in college, my dad doesn’t have to worry about coughing up tens of thousands of dollars right now, and hopefully the story ends with one of my family members getting a hybrid. The Prius gets three times the mpg of my SUV, and the hybrid SUVs get about twice the mpg, so my family does its part lessening our dependence on foreign oil and reducing air pollution! Woo hoo!

So that’s Priscilla’s little fantasy of the day.

&lt/rant&gt

MASSIVE BOOK MEME OF DOOM!

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1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

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10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller

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15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

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37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

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87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

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90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac

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93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett

94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

95. Katherine, Anya Seton

96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer

97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson

99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot

100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome

102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett

103. The Beach, Alex Garland

104. Dracula, Bram Stoker

105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz

106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens

107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz

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109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth

110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson

111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy

112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2, Sue Townsend

113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat

114. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy

116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson

117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson

118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

119. Shogun, James Clavell

120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham

121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson

122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray

123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy

124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett

127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison

128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle

129. Possession, A. S. Byatt

130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov

131. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl

133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck

134. George’s Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl

135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett

136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker

137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett

138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan

139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson

140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson

141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque

142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson

143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby

144. It, Stephen King

145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl

146. The Green Mile, Stephen King

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148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett

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155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson

156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier

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158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling

160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon

161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville

162. River God, Wilbur Smith

163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon

164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx

165. The World According To Garp, John Irving

166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore

167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson

168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye

169. The Witches, Roald Dahl

170. Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White

171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams

173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway

174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco

175. Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder

176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson

177. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl

178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach

180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery

181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson

182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay

184. Silas Marner, George Eliot

185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Gross-mith

187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh

188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine

189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri

190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence

191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons

193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett

194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells

195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans

196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett

198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White

199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle

200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews

201. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien

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203. The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan

204. The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan

205. Fires of Heaven, Robert Jordan

206. Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan

207. Winter’s Heart, Robert Jordan

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209. Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan

210. A Path of Daggers, Robert Jordan

211. As Nature Made Him, John Colapinto

212. Microserfs, Douglas Coupland

213. The Married Man, Edmund White

214. Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin

215. The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault

216. Cry to Heaven, Anne Rice

217. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell

218. Equus, Peter Shaffer

219. The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten

220. Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

221. Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn

222. The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice

223. Anthem, Ayn Rand

224. The Bridge To Terabithia, Katherine Paterson

225. Tartuffe, Moliere

226. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

227. The Crucible, Arthur Miller

228. The Trial, Franz Kafka

229. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles

230. Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles

231. Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther

232. A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen

233. Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen

234. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

235. A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry

236. ALIVE!, Piers Paul Read (saw the movie and had dinner with Nando Parrado. Does that count?)

237. Grapefruit, Yoko Ono

238. Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde

240. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley

241. Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson

242. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

242. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon

243. Summerland, Michael Chabon

244. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

245. Candide, Voltaire

246. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl

247. Ringworld, Larry Niven

248. The King Must Die, Mary Renault

249. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein

250. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle

251. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde

252. The House Of The Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne

253. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

254. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

255. The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson

256. Chocolate Fever, Robert Kimmel Smith

257. Xanth: The Quest for Magic, Piers Anthony

258. The Lost Princess of Oz, L. Frank Baum

259. Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon

260. Lost In A Good Book, Jasper Fforde

261. Well Of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde

261. Life Of Pi, Yann Martel

263. The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver

264. A Yellow Rraft In Blue Water, Michael Dorris

265. Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder

267. Where The Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls

268. Griffin & Sabine, Nick Bantock

269. Witch of Black Bird Pond, Joyce Friedland

270. Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, Robert C. O’Brien (saw the movie)

271. Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt

272. The Cay, Theodore Taylor

273. From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg

274. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Jester (this was my favourite book ever for years)

275. The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin

276. The Kitchen God’s Wife, Amy Tan

277. The Bone Setter’s Daughter, Amy Tan

278. Relic, Duglas Preston & Lincolon Child

279. Wicked, Gregory Maguire (just finished the other day!)

280. American Gods, Neil Gaiman

281. Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry

282. The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum

283. Haunted, Judith St. George

284. Singularity, William Sleator

285. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

286. Different Seasons, Stephen King

287. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk (saw the movie)

288. About a Boy, Nick Hornby

289. The Bookman’s Wake, John Dunning

290. The Church of Dead Girls, Stephen Dobyns

291. Illusions, Richard Bach

292. Magic’s Pawn, Mercedes Lackey

293. Magic’s Promise, Mercedes Lackey

294. Magic’s Price, Mercedes Lackey

295. The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav

296. Spirits of Flux and Anchor, Jack L. Chalker

297. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice

298. The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices, Brenda Love

299. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace.

300. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison.

301. The Cider House Rules, John Irving

302. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

303. Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland

304. The Lion’s Game, Nelson Demille

305. The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, Stephen Brust

306. Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh

307. Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco

308. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson

309. Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk

310. Camber of Culdi, Kathryn Kurtz

311. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

312. War and Rememberance, Herman Wouk

313. The Art of War, Sun Tzu

314. The Giver, Lois Lowry

315. The Telling, Ursula Le Guin

316. Xenogenesis (or Lilith’s Brood), Octavia Butler (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago)

317. A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold

318. The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold

319. The Aeneid, Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil)

320. Hanta Yo, Ruth Beebe Hill

321. The Princess Bride, S. Morganstern (or William Goldman)

322. Beowulf, Anonymous

323. The Sparrow, Maria Doria Russell

324. Deerskin, Robin McKinley

325. Dragonsong, Anne McCaffrey

326. Passage, Connie Willis

327. Otherland, Tad Williams

328. Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay

329. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry

330. Beloved, Toni Morrison

331. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore

332. The mysterious disappearance of Leon, I mean Noel, Ellen Raskin

333. Summer Sisters, Judy Blume

334. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo

335. The Island on Bird Street, Uri Orlev

336. Midnight in the Dollhouse, Marjorie Filley Stover

337. The Miracle Worker, William Gibson

338. The Genesis Code, John Case

339. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevensen

340. Paradise Lost, John Milton

341. Phantom, Susan Kay

342. The Mummy or Ramses the Damned, Anne Rice

343. Anno Dracula, Kim Newman

344: The Dresden Files: Grave Peril, Jim Butcher

345: Tokyo Suckerpunch, Issac Adamson

346: The Winter of Magic’s Return, Pamela Service

347: The Oddkins, Dean R. Koontz

348. My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok

349. The Last Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

350. At Swim, Two Boys, Jaime O’Neill

351. Othello, by William Shakespeare

352. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas

353. The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats

354. Sati, Christopher Pike

355. The Inferno, Dante

356. The Apology, Plato

357. The Small Rain, Madeline L’Engle

358. The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Richard E Cytowick

359. 5 Novels, Daniel Pinkwater

360. The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Juliet Marillier

361. Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier (movie)

362. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

363. Our Town, Thorton Wilder (I was in the play, but we only did the first two acts)

364. Green Grass Running Water, Thomas King

335. The Interpreter, Suzanne Glass

336. The Moor’s Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie

337. The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson

338. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster

339. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky

340. The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux

341. Pages for You, Sylvia Brownrigg

342. The Changeover, Margaret Mahy

343. Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones

344. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown

345. Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo

346. Shosha, Isaac Bashevis Singer

347. Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck

348. The Diving-bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

349. The Lunatic at Large by J. Storer Clouston

350. Time for bed by David Baddiel

351. Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold

352. Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre

353. The Bloody Sun by Marion Zimmer Bradley

354. Sewer, Gas, and Eletric by Matt Ruff

355. Jhereg by Steven Brust

356. So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane

357. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

358. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte

359. Road-side Dog, Czeslaw Milosz

360. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

361. The Bible

362. The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter

363. The Dumas Club-Arturo P?rez Reverte

364. Neither Here Nor There-Bill Bryson

365. Around the World In Eighty Day-Jules Verne

366. Asterix, Goscinny and Uderzo

367. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

368. A Streetcar Named Desire, Tenneessee Williams

369. The Client, John Grisham

370. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet B. Stowe

371. Hamlet, Shakespeare (I am a terrible person)

372. The Mararese Circle, Robert Ludlum

373. Eleven Minutes, Paulo Coelho

374. 120 Days in Sodom, the Marquis de Sade

375. A Walk To Remember, Nicholas Sparks

376. House of Mirth, Edith Wharton

377. Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton

378. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling

379. The Bad Beginning, Lemony Snickett

380. The Fire Rose, Mercedes Lackey

381. Echo, Francesca Lia Block

382.The Wayfarer Redemption (Axeman), Sara Douglass

383. Visible Amazement, Gale Zoe Garnett

389. Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman

390. Emily of New Moon, LM Montgomery

391. Death and the Penguin, Andrey Kurkov

392. 21 Short Stories, Graham Greene

393. No Exit and Three Other Plays, Jean-Paul Sartre

394. The Collected Poetry of Anna Akhmatova

395. The Odyssey, Homer

396. The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells

397. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje

398. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett (movie, and snippets from the book)

399. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

400. Tommy’s Tale, Alan Cumming

401. Down with Skool!, Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle

402. Stardust, Neil Gaiman

403. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams