I grew up reading Newsweek, because Mom and Dad subscribed to it. Over the last year or so, I've been reading Time, because the kind folks at Time Inc. zip me over an issue every Monday. So basically, my choice of newsweekly has heretofore been determined by access to freebie copies.

When Dana Reeve, arguably America's most famous caregiver, died recently, the obits mentioned she'd given up an acting and singing career to devote herself to her husband, paralyzed movie star Christopher Reeve. As profiled in the magazine Caring Today, Bridget Bennett also gave up her acting dreams to become a caregiver for her mother, a breast cancer victim.

Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel doesn't dawdle with fanciful story leads, nor does it imperil its editorial credibility by plugging, say, lip gloss as a travel accessory. So while the publication may pack all the pizzazz of an actuarial table, it relays pertinent information about destinations and deals in a readily browsable format. That's probably the reason you read a magazine like this, unless you're one of the Gabor sisters.

A series of words caught my eye on the cover of the March/April issue of Relevant Magazine: "God. Life. Progressive Culture" (the pub's tagline).... "2006 Spring Music Guide." Mentally naming as many Christian bands as possible in my head (Jars of Clay, Switchfoot, Sixpence None the Richer, Creed, Ok. Scratch Creed.), I left my local bookstore with an overworked brain and Relevant in my hand.

When did Psychology Today become a chick mag? Why wasn't I notified? And who's to blame for this genre-migrating fiasco?

Sometimes it's hard to be a cat person. Consider the horrors of hairballs, litterboxes--and gifts from those who assume that you'll love anything decorated with a feline image, no matter how cheesy. It's a mixed bag, the inventory of products that celebrate small, furry creatures that purr--not unlike the magazine Cat Fancy itself.

For me and my fellow astronomy tenderfoots, Night Sky is the best primer available on newsstands today. Though it occasionally stumbles from a design perspective--and could seriously use a paper-stock upgrade so as to render its images more lifelike--the mag rarely misfires tonally.

In an age of dumbed-down men's magazines, GQ has managed not to lose a point of its IQ. While Hachette Filipacchi's new men's pub, Shock, seeks to do just that with pictures of car crashes and the like, Conde Nast's GQ takes the classy route, with sharp cultural and political coverage among its fashion/lifestyle pages.

The spine of the March issue entices us with ''Details/Pass the Nuts.' And make mine mixed, because after all these years, I've finally found a magazine with the pitch-perfect neurotic voice for me.

With next Friday's double hit of St. Patrick's Day and the first round of the NCAA Tournament a mere 188 hours away--not to mention two family weddings looming in the months that follow--clearly need to bone up on my binge drinking. Newsstand on the corner, whadda you got for me?