Meghan Cox Gurdon

1 week ago | wsj.com | Meghan Cox Gurdon

There is nothing more difficult to put into words than the sublime. The thing to be described might be a piece of music, a scenic vista or a jolt of transcendent love. The challenge of defining the indefinable helps explain why writing about art, nature or love can so easily tip into excess. The writer gropes for similes and metaphors, heaps up adjectives or perhaps hides his inability to find the right words behind a scrim of lyricism.

4 weeks ago | wsj.com | Meghan Cox Gurdon

In Buddhism there is a teaching: One’s antagonists are the best spiritual teachers because they are so good at providing opportunities to practice patience and kindness. It is an idea that Amanda Knox credits for helping her overcome years of torment, living “in the shadow of the worst thing that I never did.” Free: My Search for Meaning Grand Central Publishing 304 pages We may earn a commission when you buy products through the links on our site.

1 month ago | wsj.com | Meghan Cox Gurdon

In the annals of American literary culture, few have left as bold a mark as Edgar Allan Poe. In 1841, with the locked-room mystery “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Poe invented the genre of detective fiction. Four years later he introduced into poetry the indelible phrase “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’” In his macabre short stories, victims are chained, set aflame, buried alive, strapped to torture tables.

1 month ago | wsj.com | Meghan Cox Gurdon

Earlier this month, Tibetans clashed with Indian police while protesting outside China’s embassy in New Delhi. To commemorate the 66th anniversary of China’s suppression of a Tibetan uprising, the demonstrators played the national anthem of their home country and waved its flag—the “snow lion” banner that’s illegal inside Tibet and that, in the West, today appears most often as a faded decal on old Subarus and Volvos. “Free Tibet,” the decal says, not very forcefully.

1 month ago | wsj.com | Meghan Cox Gurdon

The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice: How to Discover a Shape Candlewick 48 pages We may earn a commission when you buy products through the links on our site. Amazon Barnes & Noble Books a Million Bookshop One of the first concepts children learn is that of simple shapes: circles, rectangles, triangles and squares, maybe pentagons and octagons too if you’re getting fancy.