Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

I lost count of the number of magazines Earl subscribes to long before I gave up trying to read them all. Now, as they pour into our house, I merely glance at the covers and draw some quick conclusions.

For instance, the September Fortune shows a fancy racecar with the headline “Inside American’s Fastest Growing Sport.” Plastered all over the racecar are various logos representing the Fortune 100 Companies. So I guess our country’s fastest growing sport is racecar driving . . .unless it’s branding opportunities.

The November Smithsonian heralds its thirty-fifth anniversary with a cover titled “35 Who Made A Difference.” The graphic is merely a list of those men and women, and one assumes that each is profiled briefly inside. I checked the list to see whom I knew: Maya Angelou, Bill Gates, Yo-Yo Ma, Steven Spielberg, among others. The names spanned professions and industries, but I wondered if anyone anywhere in the magazine defined difference.

Then we have Money and Smart Money. The former shows a couple lounging in lawn chairs on a beach somewhere, while the latter features Fed Chairman Greenspan. The headlines on both emphasize, as does Smithsonian, the magazine industry’s current obsession with lists. There’s “Four Great Home Makeovers, Incredibly Cheap” and “Five Fantastic Laptop Computers.” Fortunately, there’s only one Greenspan.

And only one Jim Cramer on the cover of a recent Business Week. He’s the wild man who dispenses his advice on various stocks at ear-piercing decibels. Sort of reminds me of the personality of a rabid dog. Golf, of course, displays a golf course and a headline about 168 tricks. I’m assuming they’re golf tricks and not the magic kind.

At last, Forbes FYI offers us a photo of a desert with two men walking in it. The size of the men against the golden sands gives dramatic perspective to the vastness of the terrain. It could be a desert anywhere, except the headline reads: “Libya’s Shifting Sands.” In the lower corner, another headline caught my eye. It seemed rather incongruous with all that sand about, but it heralded an article that I might even read in full.

The title: “The Memphis Tailor Who Dressed Elvis.”