Reading is fundamental

What I learned last night reading the National Examiner at the Walgreens magazine rack:

• Liza's on a bender
• You can buy wigs for $29.99 from a company that advertises in tabloid newspapers
• George Strait is country music's most reticent star because two family tragedies turned him inward. One was his parents' divorce when he was quite young, and the other was the death of his 13-year-old daughter in a car accident in 1986. The pain made him throw himself into his work. But his 35-year marriage is rock solid

Sometimes when I am goofing off at a newsstand I scan the mass-market paperback books to see if there is anything I could bring myself to read. The only thing I came up with this time was John Grisham's comic 2001 novel Skipping Christmas, which is the basis for the upcoming film comedy Christmas with the Kranks. The book is available in a new movie tie-in edition with a picture of Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis on the cover. I've seen the preview for Christmas with the Kranks several times and it looks incredibly lame, but John Grisham novels are OK.

I have this thing for movie tie-in paperbacks. My copy of Less Than Zero with Andrew McCarthy, Robert Downey, Jr. and Jami Gertz on the cover is one of my most prized possessions.