A Good Book Can Distract Anyone From the ‘Busiest’ Workday

Brother, can you spare a Dostoevsky?

Two panhandlers have staked out the sidewalk in front of the 46-year-old Caravan bookstore on Grand Avenue in L.A. The other day owner Leonard Bernstein noticed that after he set a table of discount books out front, one of the panhandlers stopped to peruse them.

Up walked the second street person who said to his counterpart, “Slow day, eh?”

Commented Bernstein: “I guess one of them didn’t want to be caught reading on the job.”

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MORE CANDIDATES FOR TV’S “COPS”: Having been away on vacation for two weeks, I wanted to catch up on some of the more disturbing crime trends in the Southland so as to alert readers.

For instance, the Los Alamitos News-Enterprise reported these two calls to police from residents of Cypress:

Moody Street, 12:07 p.m.: “A customer of a strawberry vendor argued that the berries were not fresh.”

Anegada Street, 12:47 a.m.: “A resident complained that someone was making bird-type noises for 15 minutes, which was coming from a wild bird in the tree.”

And the Seal Beach Sun’s police log contained this item:

Southshore Drive, 9:41 p.m.: “A woman called police when she saw a man crawling on the roof of her two-story home when her husband was taking the dog for a walk on the beach. It turned out to be the woman’s son.”

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ADVENTURES IN DINING: For today’s selections (see accompanying), we bring you a tip from Brian Danley, who found a sandwich for light eaters, and Ken Krafthefer, who photographed a real bargain: Buy 3 and guess what? You get 3!

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com