Post-Madeline

Random House is releasing a collection of previously unpublished poems and stories from Truman Capote’s youth, recently found in the archives of the New York Public Library. Over at Full Stop, Jacob Kiernan examines the keen political conscience in Capote’s never-before-published work. As he explains it, “While his early stories are structurally simple, they evince a prescient social conscience.”

Book Three of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle is out this week, as is a new novel by Millions contributor Emma Straub. Also out: The Lobster Kings by Alexi Zentner; The Untold by Courtney Collins; Above the East China Sea by Sarah Bird; Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson; and a new volume of the Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2014 Book Preview.

Even though the new Franzen doesn’t drop for another week, for many readers, today is the biggest book release day of the summer thanks to the publication of Mockingjay, the third installment of Suzanne Collins’ blockbuster Hunger Games trilogy. For those less inclined toward young adult fare, Kevin Guilfoile’s new novel The Thousand is now out, as is The Cross of Redemption, the “uncollected writings” of James Baldwin.

The Critterati pets-in-literary-garb contest ends at midnight tonight!  You can view a gallery of the submissions as they appear, and some of them are phenomenal.  I especially like Humbert Humbert.  I don’t know how these people got their animals to cooperate (drugs, probably).  Big Ed and Nadine, aged six months, made it quite clear that under no circumstances would they be dressed up as Lata and Kabir from A Suitable Boy (what am I supposed to do with this tiny cardboard cricket bat now?)  Henry and June was also a non-starter, but that might have been unkind to do to siblings, anyway.  No one wants to see his sister chew up a garter belt. Evidently I’m not the only one to encounter massive opposition.

If the prospect of dealing with Frankenstorm is harshing your mellow this Halloween, you might want to look at The Paris Review Daily’s illustrated Telltale Heart.

Sure, you could look ahead to the happenings of 2012, but that’s only half as fun as recapping Full Stop‘s 2011 “Best of the Blog” archives. (Part 2 here)