又是一本Alain de Botton的佳作，这次是谈得很多现代人都热爱的活动 – 旅游。看过许多此类的书，写的是路线，感想，历史，当地的或自己的故事。这本真是完全不同,他引导人去思考 – 为什么出发去旅游，旅游的期盼是什么，如何欣赏旅行途中的美，又如何possess，铭记一次一次旅途中遇到的美，从而激发自己下一次，如何寻找心中的美。

非常喜欢的一段是讲英国著名的湖区诗人Wordsworth，一生热爱Lake District，写下许许多多赞美乡村，大自然美景的诗歌，作者从这一个“微游记”，写出了美景、如同美好的艺术一样，能激发人心中向善的感情。

再比如，作者讲了，面对壮阔的自然，宏伟又noble的人类建筑之时，敬畏（awe and respect)之心，不会让人产生渺小卑微之感，反而，此种感情能引导自己对自身，对社会，对生命本身无可避免之局限，缺陷能正确认识，面对。看看作者的这段 -

If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains. Sublime places gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming. But it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us. If we spend time in them, they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.

而最喜欢的那一章是谈美，旅行的一个重要目的就是寻找美，那找到之后呢，如何占有，铭记这种美呢，作者给我了最好的答案，读罢，大悟，确实如此啊，不能同意更多！ -

First, beauty was the result of a number of complex factors that affected the mind both psychologically and visually. Second, humans had an innate tendency to respond to beauty and to desire to possess it. Third, there were many lower expressions of this desire for possession (including, buying souvenirs and carpets, carving one’s name on a pillar and taking photographs). Fourth, there was only one way to possess beauty properly and that was by understanding it, by making oneself conscious of the factors (psychological and visual) responsible for it. And last, the most effective means of pursuing this conscious understanding was by attempting to describe beautiful places through art, by writing about or drawing them, irrespective of whether one happened to have any talent for doing so.