6. For an understanding of alchemy: the glass flowers in the Natural History museum, past the Science Center on Oxford Street. Anyone who has ever been asked to spin a convincing argument from difficult material will appreciate the glassblowers' unbelievable skill in crafting plants from silicon. These are not the kind of flowers one might bring as a gift; they're Amazonian plants, butterflies, beetles, vegetables, stalks, grass, all startlingly lifelike.

7. For getting lost in books: the 550-555 section of the Widener stacks, full of ancient and medieval languages. The study carrels here have excellent collections: on an average day, "Modern Persian Poetry" sits between "Language and Science in Mesopotamia" and "Readings in the Cappadocian Fathers." Best followed by an exit through Widener's main entrance, slightly disoriented, around dusk: marvel at the placement of library and church in direct opposition, fodder for any epistemological crisis.

A tie for this category is the secret upstairs room of the Lowell House library, accessible through a very steep metal stair at the back of the copy room (light switch at the top). The room contains a wonderfully arranged collection of everything from Wittgenstein and the Gitas to early American treatises on expansion, character and war.

8. For conceptual problems of interiority/exteriority: The marvelous ramp leading up and through the Carpenter Center is meant to prompt questions of where the sidewalk ends and the building begins; it snakes through the studios in an almost alimentary fashion and down to the street on the other side. The views into the galleries are worth the detour. Best at dusk.

9. For plotting the destruction or salvation of the world: the Death Star. Ask any physics major to escort you.

10. For sound and fury: the Faulkner plaque on the Lars Anderson bridge. The plaque is small, bronze, weathered and nearly impossible to pick out against the brick on the bridge's northwest side; it's inscribed "to Quentin Compson, drowned in a field of honeysuckle." Cognoscenti will recognize the bridge as the supposed location of one of the novel's great tragedies.

This is clearly not an exhaustive list. But in this shortest-of-all seasons, a season of gift lists, good- and bad-lists, shopping lists and to-do lists, I offer this as an antidote: the unobligatory list-of-discovery, list-of-nostalgia, someone-else's-list.