Darklings try to spread midnight over an entire day (Oct 31)

The Midnighters series is set in a small Oklahoma town where these few special teens can experience a hidden hour at the end of every day. At midnight clocks stop and everyone freezes, everyone except these few teens …and the dark creatures that live in the secret hour! Duh duh duuuuh!!

Well, in the third book, midnight starts to break out at other times during the day, and it will push out more and more until it breaks out completely on Samhain (Halloween for you moderns) and the darklings are free to feast on the human scum!!

(PS--I have like zero idea why this series by Scott Westerfeld that hasn’t become very popular! It’s super imaginative and gripping, and this is the best conclusion to a series EVAH!)

How to Commemorate

• Stay up till midnight.
• Wear blue (the more, the better).
• Use tridecalogisms (13-letter words) in casual conversation. (Bonus points for using 3 at a time. My fav combo is lethargically anticlimactic nefariousness, but you can find more at Dess’s page.)

Works Cited   

Blue Noon (Midnighters #3)

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Charlie goes to his first real party (Oct 28, 1991)

“Five minutes of a lifetime were truly spent, and we felt young in a good way. I have since bought the record, and I would tell you what it was, but truthfully, it’s not the same unless you’re driving to your first real party, and you’re sitting in the middle seat of a pickup with two nice people when it starts to rain.”

You’re probably doing something right now while you read this blog--maybe avoiding work, maybe drinking a glass of wine after work, maybe scrolling past on your phone while your boyfriend rambles about sports.  That’s nice.  Now stop doing that and go out and get this book.  Or get the movie (which is incredible) if you think you have such little time, but go get it.  It’s amazing.  And you’ll thank us.

Oh, and have tissues.  Charlie is one of the best, most complicated and earnest characters we have ever encountered, but …sheesh. There are feels on every page.

How to Commemorate

• Eat brownies.  
• Throw a party.  
• Watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  
• Be infinite.

Works Cited    

Perks of Being a Wallflower (book)

Amazon         Barnes & Noble        Public Libraries

Perks of Being a Wallflower (movie (don’t worry, it was made by the author))

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Halloween arrives in Green Town, Illinois. (Oct 24)

“But one strange wild dark long year, Halloween came early.  One year Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight.”

 

If you’re in the mood for a solidly spooky book, we recommend Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. I mean, if you’re into horror or creepiness and haven’t read it yet, we really don’t know what’s wrong with you, but this is the story that sets up the evil-circus-comes-to-town.   And because it’s Bradbury, his words don’t need us to get in the way of them.  Here’s a section of Chapter 37 where Charles Halloway goes to the library and assembles a collection of books in order to better understand the evil that arrived by rail.

An autumn leaf, very crisp, fell somewhere in the dark.  But it was only the page of a book, turning.

Off in one of the catacombs, bent to a table under a grass-green-shaded lamp, lips pursed, eyes narrowed, sat Charles Halloway, his hands trembling the pages, lifting, rearranging the books, Now and then he hurried off to peer into the autumn night, watchful of the streets. Then again he came back to paper-clip pages, to insert papers, to scribble out quotations, whispering to himself.

…Wet all over, cold to the bone, before night caught him he let the crowd protect, warm, and bear him away up into town, to the library, and to most important books …which he arranged in a great literary clock on a table, like someone learning to tell a new time.

How to Commemorate

• Go to a circus or festival, anywhere with a mirror maze or a carousel. 
• Get a tattoo.
• Laugh a lot.  (Trust us on this.)
• Listen to the Dans Macabre.

Works Cited    

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Amazon         Barnes & Noble        Public Libraries

Treat. Yo. Self. (Oct 13)

Tom and Donna (Parks and Rec) have an annual tradition to splurge on themselves and hit the three S's: spa, shopping, sugar. NBC has kindly offered some guidelines for how to celebrate this holiday for yo self.

We recommend:

• Get yo self a manny peddy.
• Buy yo self some bling.
• Swagger through a mall.
• No soup in the Benz!

*Share your photos and celebrations on our Facebook or twitter pages.

Works Cited   

Parks and Rec

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Happy Birthday to twins Hallie and Annie! (October 11)

Hallie and Annie met at a prestigious summer camp, and they became immediate rivals even though they looked exactly like each other (and had equally matched fencing skills).  Finally, their hoaxes and hi-jinks went too far, and the camp isolated them in their own cabin.  That’s where they learned (duh, duh, DUH!) that they were actually identical twin sisters.  Clinching the case was the fact that they were both born on October 11^th.  …And that picture of their parents, but whatever.

 

How to Commemorate

• Dress like someone’s identical twin.
• Pull a prank on someone.
• Swap places with someone. Just for a day.  Don’t be creepy.

Works Cited    

The Parent Trap (1998)

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The Parent Trap (1961) (in case you’re hard core and want to see the version where the dad smokes all the time)

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Lord Peter Wimsey marries Harriet Vale (October 8, 1937)

After an interesting courtship, the gentleman-detective in Dorothy Sayer’s mystery novels marries mystery-writer Harriet Vane in the novel Busman’s Honeymoon. Sayers was a member of the Inklings right beside Tolkien and Lewis, but instead of fantasy (and some sci-fi from Lewis) she created mysteries. I often liken her to Agatha Christie in her style and setting, and I find her characters to be well-rounded and her mysteries challenging.  

  
For more on Sayers and Wimsey, try here.

How to Commemorate

• Start the Wimsey series with Whose Body?
• Plan out a murder-mystery story.
• Meet with writers and buy them a drink.

Works Cited    

Busman’s Honeymoon

Amazon         Barnes & Noble        Public Libraries