The Great Book Spook: Scaring up a Costume
As we all know Monday is Halloween.
Although as a I kid I would incredibly excited about the IDEA of Halloween, it just didn’t really materialize for me. Candy, yes. The rest of the experience, not so much. To begin with, my costume was always meh. My mother, bless her heart, wound up circumventing the yearly headache of costuming two girls and opted for sowing my sister and me some super stylish black sacks which looked like this but WAY less glamorous.
(Sad) Black Sack Reenactment
These were very large pillowcase affairs that she would re-hem appropriately every year.
Here’s the kicker.
For like 4 or 5 years in a row we were witches, until my sister and I just gave up on the idea of Halloween…to tell you the truth, my mom probably was hoping this phase of our lives would fizzle out because the fuss of Halloween and Thanksgiving are two American traditions she just didn’t understand.
Don’t be a sad panda, though.
The birth of my kid brother has allowed me to ingratiate myself with the Halloween spirits. My brother has been everything under the sun: Dracula, a policeman, a cowboy, a lion, a viking etc. Although he has run the gamut of costumes, he hasn’t really stepped the realm of the literary.* *Dracula doesn’t really count because my brother only knew him as a monster. This year my brother is dressing up as Harry Potter.
The ever popular Potter...
Although the boy wizard is a staid staple in the way of costumes, I am immensely proud of his choice mainly because:
- It is an indicator of his newfound love of reading
- I can tell he’s really reading and paying attention because he keeps
botheringconsulting me me about the level of detail and realism his costume should have. For example: he wants to make a wand like this**, has let his hair grow out to make it messier, and is considering attaching a flashlight to the aforementioned wand so that he can perform the Lumos spell.
**I am hesitant about making the wand because last year I burned all my fingers making a paper mache viking hat out of a milk jug. Now I know what Rachel Zoe might feel like in styling a client with particular tatstes. To honor my brother’s choice of Halloween attire, I’ll dress up as Sherlock Holmes–one of MY favorite book characters. I just hope I won’t burn up in full cloak and wool jacket in the Houston humidity. Maybe we can make dressing up as a book character a yearly tradition. Either way it’s a thing of beauty–two book lovers setting off into the night after successfully spending a few months scaring up a good costume. What are you dressing up as this Halloween? But most importantly–are you terribly upset at my pun usage?
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One of my friends is doing “Sexy Virginia Woolf” — she pulled it from the same place that came up with “Sexy First Edition.”
My mom didn’t like to buy us Halloween costumes; she was very insistent on finding shit in the house and improvising an outfit. It’s a skill that has served me in life now that theme parties are so popular.
This year I plan on being a man of some kind — I wanted to be a Dough Boy, but WWI uniforms are about as expensive as you might imagine. (You should look at all the types of uniforms from France… The uniforms from their colonies, for example, are pretty interesting, and I think their officers wore powdered blue.) The inspiration, of course, includes Downton Abbey (not literary) but also E.M. Forster and D.H. Lawrence (very literary). All I need is a vintage wheelchair and a limp dick.
Sexy Virginia Woolf? Is she going to seduce people with her essay writing skills. Sounds interesting.
You do come up with some pretty awesome costumes. Hope your man-stume works out! I got crap from the little bro about being a man for Halloween. He goes wouldn’t you rather be Hermione or something? The things kids learn these days!
On a side note, I couldn’t think off the top of my head of any classic British detectives that were women…unless you count Miss Marple…
I never had a chance at halloween, cause we never celebrate it in my country
Aww. That’s awful. Hope you get the chance to do it someday (if you haven’t thus far)! What would you dress up as?
Also: thanks for reading and commenting!
Hmmm… tough. A zombie killer, probably as Zoey from L4D, or that Resident Evil chic, in which i have forgotten her name.