Travel Changes Thinking Not Just Scenery

The holiday vacation period has arrived, and many will be making travel plans--whether an annual pilgrimage to a family home or a journey to an exotic land. So here's a timely look at just three of the latest crop of travel best sellers courtesy of the New York Times listing. Atlas Obscura, by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton Workman offers nearly 500 pages about more than 700 hidden marvels, events and curiosities around the world. That's an almost overwhelming amount of inspiration for the adventurous! If you want to stick with the less exotic, check out The Road to Little Dribbling, an irreverent travelogue around Britain by American expat Bill Bryson, or go for a more luxe experience with The Hotel on Place Vendome by Tilar J. Mazzeo, about the history of Paris' famous cultural landmark, the Hotel Ritz. But mainly, I hope your travel reading will inspire actual travel plans, since prose, no matter how intriguing, is no substitute for real exploration. A trip, whether to a neighboring town or a country on the other side of the world, can broaden understanding, providing new perspectives, unlimited by ignorance and bias, on peoples and cultures. An open-minded tourist is following the sage counsel of Mark Twain, also a talented travel writer: "Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s lifetime." The best journeys then aren't about seeking a change in scenery but finding a change in thinking. So don't just read a travel book, use it to inform your next real-life travel adventure. Take the advice of Saint Augustine to heart: "The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page." For more travel best sellers, see http://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/travel/?_r=0