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Let's face it: Children aren't cheap. While the smiles, laughter and joy they bring are priceless, the doctor bills, clothes and shoes, toys, dental work and college tuition add up to a small fortune.

Editor's note: It's a new year and these are tough times, but not so tough that you can't find some cost-cutting detours when spending your money. Through Sunday in Living Here, we're offering a daily dose of 15 ways to save on food and wine, outdoor activities, entertainment, home and garden, and caring for yourself and your family. Keep the change.

• Monday: Spend less on books and media

• Today: Families can save

• Wednesday: Grocery-store savings

• Thursday: Outdoor fun for less

• Friday: Bargains around town

• Saturday: Saving around the house

• Sunday: Cutting medical and fitness costs

Share your great money-saving tips by clicking here.

Let's face it: Children aren't cheap. While the smiles, laughter and joy they bring are priceless, the doctor bills, clothes and shoes, toys, dental work and college tuition add up to a small fortune.

From the supermarket to the movie theater, going out with children can be expensive, but it doesn't have to burn a hole in your wallet. This mother of two has some tips on how you can keep some of that hard-earned cash in your wallet without sacrificing fun.

Skip kid's meal

Forgo ordering a child's meal at a restaurant. If your meal includes elements your child will eat, just ask for another plate and portion out some of the food.

Think small

Order appetizers, or an appetizer sampler, instead of entrees. It's cheaper, gets to the table faster and chances are you'll wind up with something that will appease even the pickiest pint-sized palate.

Pack and carry

Brown-bag it when heading to family venues. Meals at zoos, ball games and other venues can cost a lot; some places allow customers to bring in packed meals. Bag a few homemade sandwiches and some drinks, call it a picnic and have fun with your family instead of waiting in line for a soggy, overpriced corndog.

Check kids-eat-free deals

Take advantage of kids-eat-free deals at restaurants. Many restaurants offer free meals for kids on certain weekdays, including IHOP, Chevy's and Island's. At Cabos in Rocklin, children ages 10 and under eat free Monday through Friday, through the end of the month. The promotion started in December and the offer was extended in hopes of bringing in business.

"It's also a way to help the community" by helping customers save money, said Hector Gomez, one of the restaurants' partners.

Grab take-and-bake pizza

Go for take-and-bake pizza instead of takeout. Pizza you bake costs about half of what pizza chains charge. Better yet, buy ingredients at the store and make pizza as a family activity. Maybe if the child gets to spread the veggies on the pizza, he'll actually eat them. (Well, a parent can dream, right?)

Watch for early bird specials

Go for an early dinner out and hit up "early bird specials." Small children are often hungrier earlier in the evening, anyway, and it will help you avoid crowded restaurants, long waits and hunger meltdowns.

Share movie popcorn

When heading to the movies with a gaggle of children, order one large, refillable popcorn instead of the child's box (which typically includes a child-size popcorn, candy and soda). Want to bypass ribcage jabbing and exasperated cries of "Mom! She won't hand over the popcorn!"? Bring along a few disposable bowls or cups and divvy out the snack during the previews. If candy is a movie must-have, dollar stores often have good deals. Juice boxes also provide a cheaper – and healthier – alternative to fountain soft drinks.

Clip dining coupons

Check The Bee and its Ticket and Explore sections, mailers and Web sites for restaurant coupons and deals. Frequent diner? Consider buying an "Entertainment Book," which has dozens of restaurant coupons, suggests Good Housekeeping's editors in "Good Housekeeping Good Deal & Smart Steals" (Sterling Publishing Co., October 2008). Go to www.entertainment.com for more information.

For today only, the Old Spaghetti Factory is offering super-discounted prices on six of its dinner items, slashing prices to about $2.35 to $3.45 per dinner, which includes salad, pasta entree, fresh bread and spumoni ice cream. The restaurant also is offering kids meal items for about $2. The price cut is in celebration of the restaurant's 40th anniversary, states a company news release.

Busy today? The savings continue throughout the month, as the restaurant also is offering 40 percent off some dinners and kids menu items on Mondays and Tuesdays this month. The Old Spaghetti Factory has locations in Sacramento, Elk Grove, Roseville and Rancho Cordova. For information: www.osf.com.

Try side dishes

Have a finicky eater in your house? Pack something your child will eat and take it with you to the restaurant. Order them a side of fries or vegetables so they can feel included in the dining-out experience.

Slice your own fruit

Skip pre-cut fruit in the supermarket. If your kids must have sliced fruit, the do-it-yourself method is cheaper and takes only a couple minutes. Just cut up the apples, sprinkle on a little bottled lemon juice to keep them from browning, store in a zip bag and go. Pineapple juice also is said to keep fruit from browning.

Pass on the kid's cart

Avoid letting kids use the child-size shopping cart at the supermarket, Good Housekeeping editors suggest. Doing so will help avoid sticker shock at the cash register (for you) and tantrums (for them).

Sample freebies

Freebies at the supermarket can help ward off the "gimmies." Safeway and Trader Joe's will give children a free balloon. At Raley's, Bel Air and Nob Hill markets, the bakery departments hand out free cookies.

"Our stores have a history of creating a family-friendly atmosphere," said Amy Davis, a Raley's spokeswoman. "We're glad to help busy families with their grocery shopping, by making it more than just a chore, but an experience."

Try some cheap fun

Ultra-cheap thrill: OK, it's not the kids who eat inexpensively here, but it is cheap fun: Head to the Nimbus Fish Hatchery, where you can buy a handful of fish food to feed the gilled residents for – get this – 5 cents.

Look for hotel deals

Taking a trip? Check for hotels offering kids-eat-free deals or swag for kiddies. Holiday Inn offers free meals for guests' children, while some Westin hotels and resorts offer a children's club and even give goody bags to kids ages 3 to 12.

Have a family night

Have a family night at home. A trip to the movies and a midprice dinner for a family of four can cost upwards of $70. A home-baked pizza and rented movie? About $15. That's $55 you can put toward the college fund.

Levi Benkert holds daughter Ruth while visiting his "Good project" in West Sacramento. He applies many of the same principles of housing development to raising his three children.

Editor's note: Few parents can claim to be child-rearing professionals. In this occasional series, we show what people have learned about parenting from their day jobs. If you have other ideas for professionals to interview, let us know.

Levi Benkert quickly and succinctly summarized what his profession has taught him about child- rearing.

"Patience."

Benkert is a developer – the founder, with the late Jason Presley, of LJ Urban.

"Everything I do is a multiyear process," Benkert said. "Some of our first projects are still going on five years later."

A single project may require land acquisition, zoning changes, design, permitting, financing and construction.

Sometimes developers wait decades for projects to reach fruition.

Kids always take that long.

"With kids, you have to slow down and take the long view," Benkert said. You can't just do whatever it is you want to do with your kids right now.

"It's a very long, slow process," Benkert said. He was talking by phone from the California State Railroad Museum, where he had taken his children.

"It's not that you don't enjoy the process along the way," he added.

Benkert's children are 8, 4 and 2 years old.

He didn't start his development career with the long view.

"It was always going to be an instant dream," he said.

He quickly woke up from the instant dream and learned it takes patience to build something like LJ's "Good project" of single-family units in West Sacramento.

Like other developers, he's also learned how the economic downturn can interfere with plans.

That has helped him realize – in developing buildings and kids – to "focus now on what's going on right now."

How you treat kids in their formative years is critical to what kind of adults they will become.

The same is true of development. Benkert wants his developments to provide positive social results, not just profits.

LJ Urban's development philosophy is based on a concept of building communities and protecting the environment.

Having kids reinforces the idea that Benkert wants to be sure "that we're not just destroying the Earth and leaving a mess (for them) to clean up," he said.

So LJ Urban has focused on infill, sustainable building materials, energy efficiency and developments that foster community.

Developing (kids and homes) in the present. Thinking about the future.

"I write about the issues I care about, and I know it's a luxury to have an audience for that," said author Richard North Patterson.

Patterson, 61, a former trial lawyer, has been a best-selling novelist for 28 years. His new (and 16th) book, "Eclipse" (Henry Holt, $26, 384 pages; on sale today), is The Bee Book Club's choice for January. On this outing, Patterson takes on the sociological, political and environmental catastrophes that oil wealth has brought down on Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa.

In his body of work, his forte has been addressing major issues of national and/or global concern through a cast of characters who end up in courtrooms, one way or another.

Patterson visited Nigeria as part of the research for his new novel. In it, his plot recounts his own edgy, first-person experiences in Nigeria, one of the world's most dangerous spots.

Patterson will give a talk, answer questions and autograph copies of "Eclipse" for The Bee Book Club at 6 p.m. Jan. 15 at Borders Books, 2339 Fair Oaks Blvd., Sacramento; (916) 564-0168.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information: (916) 321-1128.

These bookstores will offer a 30 percent discount on "Eclipse" through Jan. 15: Borders, Barnes & Noble, Avid Reader at the Tower in Sacramento, Avid Reader in Davis, Time Tested Books, Underground Books, Hornet Bookstore at CSUS, UC Davis Bookstore, East-West Bookstore and the Bookseller in Grass Valley

The Manning family Bible vanished so long ago that Leanor Manning Gilbert and Janice Manning, two Sacramento-area sisters, never knew it existed. At least, not until early December, when a stranger in Wyoming tracked them down and returned the 1870s-era Bible.

For Mary Hay of Pine Bluffs, Wyo., the Bible represents a longtime puzzle solved, a solution finally found.

For Manning, 69, and Gilbert, 68, this tattered Bible with faded inscriptions is a family artifact they've come to cherish.

"I was absolutely thrilled," says Gilbert, a retired lawyer who practiced in Canada. "I still am. Everybody who knows me has heard about it."

The package arrived on Jan Manning's south Sacramento doorstep not long before Christmas, carefully sealed in layers of bubble wrap and cardboard. But for now, the Bible is with Gilbert in her Citrus Heights town house, and she spends hours matching the scrawled lists of marriages, births and deaths with the memories she and her sister share.

As she says, "There are people in it whom we knew when they were old and we were young, people we knew only by name, and people we never knew."

Story starts at estate sale

The story begins in 2000, when Mary Hay's late stepmother bought the Bible at a Wyoming estate auction, thinking it might contain information on Hay's mother's family, whose surname was Mannings.

Nope. No connection.

"My stepmother didn't think it was right that someone was selling a family's Bible," says Hay, 43, who lives on a small horse ranch. "She was quite upset about that."

So her stepmother turned the Bible over to Hay, who enjoys researching genealogy. The idea all along was to return the Bible to its original family.

But because Hay doesn't own a home computer, she dabbled as best she could through the years, mainly using the computers at the public libraries in Cheyenne and Pine Bluffs.

A few months ago, she says, she ran across an ancestry.com link to the 2004 obituary notice of a Sacramento woman named Barbara Manning. Her husband, who died before her, had been named Willard, matching one of the final birth names listed in the Bible. Gilbert and Manning were named among the survivors.

"I typed in the daughters' names online, and lo and behold, an address comes up for Jan on the same street where Willard had been listed," says Hay.

So she called Jan Manning. Twice.

"I kept meaning to call her back," says Manning, a retired social worker. "And she made the effort to call a second time. I was just floored by the whole thing."

May have been left in move

The Manning sisters were born in Nebraska and grew up in Colorado. Their father worked as an accountant in Denver, and he owned a small apartment building where the family lived. In the 1950s, the family moved to Oregon – and in 1975, to Sacramento.

As best the sisters can figure, the Bible was among the possessions their parents left behind at the Colorado apartment, intending to send for it later.

"Either they couldn't get back to pick the things up or they forgot about them, God forbid," says Gilbert.

The Bible, several inches thick and in need of rebinding, was published in 1872 by William W. Harding of Philadelphia. But on the pages of the family section, tucked between the Old and New Testaments, someone long ago inked in Manning family dates going back to 1826.

"I'm figuring that was Amanda Manning, who went back and put in her birth date and her husband's," says Gilbert. "We don't know much about her."

Amanda Manning and her husband, Jacob Morey, lead the lists of names. On these yellowing pages, the family branches out into rosters written in different hands. Willard Emerson Manning is the last birth, listed in the early 1900s.

Unto others, a good deed

Gilbert wants to add current information about her siblings and their children and grandchildren on a separate sheet to be kept with the Bible.

As she points out, in another generation no one will remember how difficult genealogy research was before computers brought incredible amounts of information to us instantly.

But let's hope no one forgets the kind of decency that Mary Hay brought to the enterprise. She refused the Manning sisters' offers to pay her, even for shipping costs.

Says Hay: "That family was out there somewhere and I found them. It was their Bible, and now they have it.

"When I talked to her, Jan asked me how much I wanted for it. But why should she buy something that's hers anyway? I wanted her to have it."

Cats can tell when their humans are getting ready to leave – and they may not be happy.

My cat, Misty, is like a little child. I am a nurse and work nights. When I put on my scrubs, she immediately starts to cry and grabs my ankles with all four paws. She does this only when I put on my scrubs, not when I dress in street clothes. I keep a special treat to give her, but she still cries. How can I get her to stop?

– E.G., via e-mail

Misty has learned that when you put on scrubs, it means you're leaving the house. Many cats become anxious when they see suitcases or other signs that their people are leaving, and this may explain part of her behavior. She also sees you putting on scrubs and begins to anticipate her treat. Her crying and grabbing your legs may be her way of demanding that treat from you.

If you give Misty a special treat when you put on your scrubs and when she grabs your legs and cries, then she has good reason to continue or even increase this behavior. What gets rewarded gets repeated when it comes to pet behaviors. When our pets figure out what behavior works to get what they want or need, then you can be sure those behaviors will continue.

Try feeding Misty in another room when you put on your scrubs to give her something else to do. Your best bet is to completely ignore Misty if she does cry and grab your legs. Begin a daily routine at other times of interactive play with toys, and toss in her special treats at other times.

Be aware that any time a pet behavior that is well-ingrained no longer produces the expected results, that behavior may increase before the pet gives it up and tries a different strategy. In other words, she may become even more demanding in the short run, but stick with it. No more treats for her leg-grabbing drama.

– Susan and Dr. Rolan Tripp, AnimalBehavior.net

The Eureka Boss 4D Pet Fresh vacuum cleaner is targeted toward pet owners.

Last week, I wrote about the promising new products that have made me take notice as a practicing veterinarian. This week, my focus is on nonmedical products that have caught my attention as a pet lover and that will make taking care of your pet easier or more fun.

Just as with the veterinarian breakthroughs, this week's products were gleaned from suggestions from more than 100 experts. We have the list of all my "Dr. Becker's Best" products on our Web site, PetConnection.com, so drop in for more information.

• Food puzzles: Veterinary behaviorists say it's important to reduce or eliminate the mind-numbing boredom that comes from just eating food out of a bowl. Boredom equals behavioral problems, and behavioral problems may mean a homeless pet. Food puzzles, such as these from Premier (www.premier.com), can help. The Kibble Nibble appeals to dogs' natural prey and stalking drives. For the kibble or treats to dispense, dogs must roll, push and chase the toy. The Kibble Nibble holds up to 2 cups of kibble or treats. It unscrews for easy loading and quick cleanup ($20).

The Bristle Bone is a refillable dental toy made with nylon bristles and rubber nubs that gently scrape and clean teeth as dogs chew ($10-$15).

• Easier nail-trims: Find the quick for a no-blood, no-pain nail trim with the Quick Finder nail clipper. The product has a light source mounted on it to shine through the nail and colors that tell you when it's safe to cut: red for no, green for go (www.quickfinderclipper.com, $33).

• Perfect portions every time: Petmate's new Electronic Portion Control LeBistro measures meals just as carefully as you do, to ensure that your pet gets the right amount of food, right on time. Program it like an alarm clock, and it dispenses preset portions of food up to three times a day. The 5-pound capacity is ideal for those with cats and small dogs (Petmate.com, $80-$90).

• Promote prey play: Based on the preying and social behavior of dogs, the Flappy Dog toy simulates the excitement of catching a prey and proudly shaking it. This toy was a major hit with the Becker family dogs (ourpets.com/products_ flappy.html, $13-$17).

• No more water slops: The DrinkBetter pet bowl encourages dogs to drink at a slower rate and makes less mess while they're doing it. The Drink Better bowl uses a floating obstacle to control the flow of water, encouraging dogs to drink slower and take only as much as they need, without soaking their ears and muzzles or slopping water around the feeding area (contech-inc. com/products/drinkbetter, $25).

• Get the pet hair: Eureka Boss 4D Pet Fresh vacuum comes with tools to help pet owners eliminate odors naturally and remove pet hair and dander from stairs, furniture and the floor. We've given this one a good workout, and it works (Eureka.com, $138). My Pet Connection co-author, Gina Spadafori, says if you're looking for a handheld, the new Dyson DC-16 keeps up with the mess at her home (Dyson.com, $150).

• A party for pets: The Puppy Piñata is a plush toy containing treats that stimulate a dog's natural desire to search and investigate. Our dogs smelled the product through the packaging and got as excited about the piñata as a stick-swinging 6-year-old at a birthday party (www.puppy-pinata.com, $7-$11).

• Making balconies safer: A great idea, long overdue. Puppy Bumpers fit around the necks of puppies and small dogs to protect them from getting through baby gates and balcony railings. With so many people keeping small dogs in upper-floor apartments, this is one product that really could save a life (puppybumpers.net, $20).

• Food and water to go: The collapsible Zuka Bowl has colorful and fun prints and features a carabiner-type clip to attach it to a belt or bag. It'll also fit easily in a purse or in a car (itzadog.com, $16).

The Bristle Bone cleans a dog's teeth while the dog chews.
Petmate's Le Bistro dispenses a preset amount of kibble using a timer.

"Brooklyn Bridge" by Karen Hesse, Chris Sheban (Illustrator)

Two years ago, Newbery Medal winner Karen Hesse went to a conference in Atlanta and met Bill Slavin, author of "Transformed: How Everyday Things Are Made." Fascinated by Slavin's book, Hesse began reading through it; when she came to page 36, she read a brief mention about the first teddy bear and its creator, a man named Morris Michtom.

Something stirred in Hesse and she immediately began researching the Michtom family. She used the research as the basis for her newest novel, "Brooklyn Bridge" (Feiwell and Friends, $17.95).

Set in the summer of 1903, Hesse's novel tells the story of 14-year-old Joseph Michtom, Morris' son, who isn't so sure that the teddy bear business is such a great thing for his close-knit Russian-Jewish family. Since the Michtoms made their first teddy bear, inspired by a political cartoon showing President Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear, the family has been inundated by orders.

That's definitely good for the family finances. But all of the Michtoms, except for 3-year-old Benjamin, must pitch in to keep up with the growing business. There's little time for family activities or stickball with friends, and no time to fulfill Joseph's dearest wish – visiting the brand-new Coney Island.

Hesse contrasts Joseph's rags-to-riches story with brief tales of far less fortunate Brooklyn children – orphaned, abused, abandoned – who live in their own settlement under the bridge. There's Otto, who once lived with a hermit; Willie, whose father locked him in a room with a rag stuffed in his mouth to keep him quiet; and May, whose lips were burned by carbolic acid. These children scavenge food and help one another survive in a world that offers little promise of a better future.

Together, Joseph's story and the vignettes of the "bridge children" create an emotionally charged look at New York at the turn of the 20th century. As the story progresses, Hesse gradually draws the narratives together, working up to a denouement that is compelling, even as it stretches credulity.

Hesse, who won a Newbery Medal for "Out of the Dust," has a masterful touch at historic fiction, and "Brooklyn Bridge" is the latest example of her talent to take history and create a story that resonates with readers.

"Toy Dance Party" Emily Jenkins Schwartz & Wade/Random House, $16.99, 176 pages, ages 6-10

Stingray, Lumphy the buffalo and Plastic are back with more adventures in "Toy Dance Party."

First introduced in "Toys Go Out," the trio of friends, who actually are two stuffed toys and a ball, belong to the "Girl." In this book, the Girl is growing older and spending less time with toys. Instead, she's going to sleepovers, while the toys continue to have adventures, such as nearly perishing in a snowstorm and rescuing a mouse from the vacuum cleaner.

As in the first book, author Emily Jenkins makes these three inanimate objects totally believable, giving them feelings of jealousy, fear and joy that are instantly recognizable to any young reader.

The holidays drained all my energy. I can't seem to return to a normal schedule. My parents are basically healthy but no longer drive. So I am their chauffeur every day. I need a rest.

Yes, you do need a break from the tedious chores that sap your energy.

• By combining chores (a doctor appointment and shopping), you save yourself from running around every day.

• Hire someone to chauffeur your parents on a regular basis. This person can certainly take your parent grocery shopping or to the senior center or church.

• Locate a nearby assisted-living or continuing-care retire- ment community that has respite care, for a week or two. Your parents can stay at this "hotel" and be cared for. They also can participate in activities they would not normally have because they live in their own home.

You can go away on a vacation, knowing your parents are being well cared for. Or you can stay home and indulge yourself with lunch with friends or a spa day.

We're upset that my father refused to spend Christmas with us. In the past, my parents always stayed at least several days. My mother passed away three years ago. My father had been fine until his 14-year-old Lab died last summer. My father has become reclusive. How can we help him regain his former active lifestyle?

Only your father can regain his former lifestyle, perhaps with a little help from you and your sister.

Living alone can be depressing for many people. Coming home to a silent house can be daunting.

Another dog, another living thing, can help alleviate this silence. Pets do give unconditional love and need attention. People of all ages need to feel needed.

A puppy is a lot of work. An animal shelter or the rescue unit for Labs can provide a dog that has already been housebroken and somewhat trained. But your father should make the decision and choose the dog.

Studies continue to show that pet owners live longer and healthier.

While I'm away, readers give the advice.

On making peace with being single: Some people hit the jackpot in their marriages – love, trust, respect, companionship, laughter, passion – but how many relationships really fit that bill? And if you go around needing and longing to hit that jackpot, and feeling incomplete because you don't, isn't that neediness making you vulnerable to falling for a Mr. or Ms. Wrong, who is presenting as a dreamboat but is actually a nightmare?

I fell into this trap twice, and I have two sets of divorce paperwork and a huge debt to my lawyer to show for it.

The feeling that I have developed of being emotionally independent, strong and free from neediness is a wonderful experience and one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. I am not closed off from a relationship, and I am not just trying to convince myself that I am perfectly fine alone. Many who have escaped a horrible marriage have this same terrific feeling. I have been out four years, and although I still believe the people who have hit the jackpot have the happiest life possible, feeling that I truly own my life is pretty darned great.

To those "longing" people, I say just focus on what you can do each day to feel good about yourself and make your life meaningful.

When you start feeling twinges, distract yourself. Do not dwell on them. Compartmentalize. Be tough on yourself. Do you really want the weakness and vulnerability that come with being needy? You don't go around dwelling on the fact that you haven't won the Powerball. You don't have to have it to have a happy life. I now see the jackpot relationship that way. It's great if it happens; it doesn't happen to a whole lot of people. And I truly believe it.

– L.

On the stigma of multiple divorces: Recently an acquaintance was complaining about a supervisor of hers at work, and she wrapped up her comments with this: "It's easy to understand why she's been divorced two times." Since she doesn't know me well, she is not aware that I also have been divorced two times.

What I would like her (and others) to understand is not just how judgmental that attitude is, but that one divorce can easily lead to another in a way that does not indicate negative attributes about the divorcing person.

Once you are divorced, there are many things working against a strong second marriage: There may be children to complicate meeting new possible mates, as well as loneliness that might drive a single person too hard to make a relationship work; there are certainly repercussions (emotional, financial, situational) that may erode confidence and narrow the social possibilities that were so seemingly unbounded in earlier single days.

In my case, it was basically a mismatch that some skill and confidence might have turned into a good relationship – but I didn't have enough of either to overcome his lack of skill, which ended up in abusive behavior. Now alone again, I hope that people will not judge and try to be compassionate toward those who have arrived at a sad place and are trying to make the best of it nonetheless.

– M.

The discussion of multitasking made us curious about whether some of our favorite regional authors include listening to music during their reading -- or writing. Here are some of their responses:

Karen Joy Fowler of Santa Cruz

Author of five novels (including "The Jane Austen Book Club") and four short-story collections. Her newest title is "Wit's End." She has a short-story collection appearing this year, and a new novel, "Rattling Their Cages," is scheduled for 2010.

For readers: "(My friends and I) are dubious about the whole concept (of multitasking). We suspect younger people can't multitask, either. It's the new name for not paying attention.

"On the plane to a remote writing retreat, I watched the movie 'Mamma Mia!' I spent three weeks with the songs of ABBA running in my head. Nightmare! My readers should listen to anything but ABBA!"

Writing: "I don't listen to music when I write because I can't do both. I spend more time trying to get songs out of my head than in."

James Rollins of Sacramento

Author of 10 thrillers and eight fantasy novels. His next book is "The Doomsday Key," to be published in June.

For readers and when he writes: "A group called Dead Can Dance is nice because the music is instrumental and doesn't distract by having lyrics. There's a lot of world music behind it, and my stories have an international scope, so it fits."

Reading: "Somebody sent me the soundtrack from 'The Bourne Identity,' and I listened to it while reading my last book. I was listening to the CD in my car with a friend, and he asked, 'What's that music?' I said, 'They turned my book into a movie and this is the soundtrack to it.' He fell for it, and I let that go for a couple of days before I finally told him the truth."

Cara Black of San Francisco

Author of the nine-book Aimee Leduc mystery series, set in Paris. Her newest title, "Murder in the Latin Quarter," will be published in March.

For readers: " 'La Vie en Rose' by Edith Piaf. The song is about life being hard, but when you're in love, life is rosy despite the hardships."

While writing and reading: "Classical music in the background."

Tess Gerritsen

Author of 23 thrillers. Her latest title is "Keepsake."

For readers: "I love movie theme music, and the one I listen to over and over is the (soundtrack) to 'Gladiator.' And the music from the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. (Both of those) are fabulous for getting (the reader) in the mood for action."

Writing: "Silence, because I'm waiting to hear the voices of my characters."

Reading: "Rod Stewart's golden oldies. That beautiful gravelly voice sounds like a French chanteuse."

John Lescroart of Davis

Author of 19 mysteries; he is a musician of some local repute. His newest title, "A Plague of Secrets," will be published in July.

For readers: "Jimmy Buffett and Kenny Chesney, who I listen to almost exclusively. Or if you want, you can watch a Renée Zellweger movie while reading my books -- or a Jimmy Buffett book -- and listen to Chesney.

"To get that San Francisco mood, the other is 'Might as Well: The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead.' "

Writing and reading: "I don't listen to a thing for either."

Luanne Rice

Author of nearly 30 books, including two series. Her newest title is "The Letters" (with Joseph Monninger), to be followed in April by "The Geometry of Sisters." She is also a songwriter "learning to play the guitar."

For readers: "This playlist is (part of) what I listen to when I'm editing and during the in-between times, when ideas are coming up. It fits my books, because my writing is pretty emotional."

"There Goes Mavis," Richard Shindell; "Revelator," Gillian Welch; "Out in the Rain," Buddy and Julie Miller; "The Mountain," Steve Earle; "Cabin," Maesa Pullman; "Every Now and Then," Maura Fogarty; "Blue Northern Lights," Ollabelle; "Not California," Hem; "Willow Tree," Diana Jones; "Janey, Don't You Lose Heart," Bruce Springsteen; "Speaking With the Angel," Cry Cry Cry; "Razor Love," Neil Young; and "Hey Ya," Obadiah Parker.

Writing: "Nothing, because music would pull me away from the places I have to go when I'm creating."

Reading: "I like to get lost in the books and not be pulled away by music. So many of the songs I like tell stories and have so much emotional power that they need to be listened to by themselves."

Debbie Macomber

Author of more than 70 books of women's fiction in 13 series and 60-some stand-alone novels. Her new title is "A Cedar Cove Christmas."

For readers: "One would be Roger Whitaker's 'The Last Farewell.' It always brings tears to my eyes. I can so easily envision this man going off to war with no fear of death. What he really dreads is leaving those he loves. Ah -- now, that's romantic."

Writing/editing: "I don't listen to music when I write; it's too confusing with all those characters talking back and forth in my head."

Reading: "Unfortunately, what's generally in the background when I read is some football game my husband is watching. If there's music, it's most often from the commercials."

Kim Stanley Robinson of Davis

Author of numerous science-fiction short stories and books, most notably three trilogies: "Orange County," "Mars" and "The Capital." His newest title is "Galileo's Dream," to be published in August.

For readers: "In 'The Martians' -- my short stories associated with 'Red Mars,' 'Green Mars' and 'Blue Mars' -- I suggest a soundtrack of appropriate music for different chapters of (the trilogy). I was writing to a lot of this music and listening to it (for pleasure)."

The selections include Astor Piazzolla ("Tango: Zero Hour"), Gorecki's Third Symphony, the Japanese folk song "Sakura," Bach's "Goldberg Variations" (the Glenn Gould version), Louis Armstrong (the 1946-56 era), Clifford Brown, Charles Mingus, Keith Jarrett's "Köln Concert" and Najma. Plus, Pete Townshend, Van Morrison and Yes.

Writing/editing: "At the end of writing a book, I put on either Beethoven's last five string quartets or Bach's cello suites, something that is non-verbal and cannot distract. Both (composers) are very busy, like gears grinding or thoughts thinking. They signal to me that I am near the end of a book and I should flog myself."

Jan Burke of Long Beach

Author of the 12-book Irene Kelly mystery series. Her new book, "The Messenger," is a supernatural-thriller stand-alone.

For readers: "I've referenced a song (in a book) only once, Duke Ellington's 'All the Things You Are.' Other than that, it's their choice."

Writing/editing: "Something without lyrics, although I often listen to something with lyrics at first to get me rolling. For 'Goodnight Irene,' I listened to Leonard Cohen's 'Joan of Arc' with Jennifer Warnes. For 'Hocus," (it was) "Ancient Music for a Modern Age.' For my new book, it was 'The Carnival of the Animals.' I also listen to opera duets, medieval madrigals, Gregorian chants and Blue Man Group."

Linda Lael Miller

Author of 50-plus books of women's fiction in 12 series. Her new title is "A McKettrick Christmas."

For readers and herself: "Country music. My all-time favorites are Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris and Randy Travis."

Writing/editing: "Complete silence."

Editor's note: It's a new year and these are tough times, but not so tough that you can't find some cost-cutting detours when spending your money. Today through Sunday in Living Here, we'll offer a daily dose of 15 ways to save on food and wine, outdoor activities, entertainment, home and garden, and caring for yourself and your family. Keep the change.

• Today: Spend less on books and media

• Tuesday: Families can save

• Wednesday: Grocery-store savings

• Thursday: Outdoor fun for less

• Friday: Bargains around town

• Saturday: Saving around the house

• Sunday: Cutting medical and fitness costs

Share your great money-saving tips by logging on to the Bee's lifestyle forum at sacbee.com/forums and click on "Ways To Save."

The discussion of multitasking made us curious about whether some of our favorite regional authors include listening to music during their reading – or writing. Here are some of their responses:

Karen Joy Fowler of Santa Cruz

Author of five novels (including "The Jane Austen Book Club") and four short-story collections. Her newest title is "Wit's End." She has a short-story collection appearing this year, and a new novel, "Rattling Their Cages," is scheduled for 2010.

For readers: "(My friends and I) are dubious about the whole concept (of multitasking). We suspect younger people can't multitask, either. It's the new name for not paying attention.

"On the plane to a remote writing retreat, I watched the movie 'Mamma Mia!' I spent three weeks with the songs of ABBA running in my head. Nightmare! My readers should listen to anything but ABBA!"

Writing: "I don't listen to music when I write because I can't do both. I spend more time trying to get songs out of my head than in."

James Rollins of Sacramento

Author of 10 thrillers and eight fantasy novels. His next book is "The Doomsday Key," to be published in June.

For readers and when he writes: "A group called Dead Can Dance is nice because the music is instrumental and doesn't distract by having lyrics. There's a lot of world music behind it, and my stories have an international scope, so it fits."

Reading: "Somebody sent me the soundtrack from 'The Bourne Identity,' and I listened to it while reading my last book. I was listening to the CD in my car with a friend, and he asked, 'What's that music?' I said, 'They turned my book into a movie and this is the soundtrack to it.' He fell for it, and I let that go for a couple of days before I finally told him the truth."

Cara Black of San Francisco

Author of the nine-book Aimee Leduc mystery series, set in Paris. Her newest title, "Murder in the Latin Quarter," will be published in March.

For readers: " 'La Vie en Rose' by Edith Piaf. The song is about life being hard, but when you're in love, life is rosy despite the hardships."

While writing and reading: "Classical music in the background."

Tess Gerritsen

Author of 23 thrillers. Her latest title is "Keepsake."

For readers: "I love movie theme music, and the one I listen to over and over is the (soundtrack) to 'Gladiator.' And the music from the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. (Both of those) are fabulous for getting (the reader) in the mood for action."

Writing: "Silence, because I'm waiting to hear the voices of my characters."

Reading: "Rod Stewart's golden oldies. That beautiful gravelly voice sounds like a French chanteuse."

John Lescroart of Davis

Author of 19 mysteries; he is a musician of some local repute. His newest title, "A Plague of Secrets," will be published in July.

For readers: "Jimmy Buffett and Kenny Chesney, who I listen to almost exclusively. Or if you want, you can watch a Renée Zellweger movie while reading my books – or a Jimmy Buffett book – and listen to Chesney.

"To get that San Francisco mood, the other is 'Might as Well: The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead.' "

Writing and reading: "I don't listen to a thing for either."

Luanne Rice

Author of nearly 30 books, including two series. Her newest title is "The Letters" (with Joseph Monninger), to be followed in April by "The Geometry of Sisters." She is also a songwriter "learning to play the guitar."

For readers: "This playlist is (part of) what I listen to when I'm editing and during the in-between times, when ideas are coming up. It fits my books, because my writing is pretty emotional."

"There Goes Mavis," Richard Shindell; "Revelator," Gillian Welch; "Out in the Rain," Buddy and Julie Miller; "The Mountain," Steve Earle; "Cabin," Maesa Pullman; "Every Now and Then," Maura Fogarty; "Blue Northern Lights," Ollabelle; "Not California," Hem; "Willow Tree," Diana Jones; "Janey, Don't You Lose Heart," Bruce Springsteen; "Speaking With the Angel," Cry Cry Cry; "Razor Love," Neil Young; and "Hey Ya," Obadiah Parker.

Writing: "Nothing, because music would pull me away from the places I have to go when I'm creating."

Reading: "I like to get lost in the books and not be pulled away by music. So many of the songs I like tell stories and have so much emotional power that they need to be listened to by themselves."

Debbie Macomber

Author of more than 70 books of women's fiction in 13 series and 60-some stand-alone novels. Her new title is "A Cedar Cove Christmas."

For readers: "One would be Roger Whitaker's 'The Last Farewell.' It always brings tears to my eyes. I can so easily envision this man going off to war with no fear of death. What he really dreads is leaving those he loves. Ah – now, that's romantic."

Writing/editing: "I don't listen to music when I write; it's too confusing with all those characters talking back and forth in my head."

Reading: "Unfortunately, what's generally in the background when I read is some football game my husband is watching. If there's music, it's most often from the commercials."

Kim Stanley Robinson of Davis

Author of numerous science-fiction short stories and books, most notably three trilogies: "Orange County," "Mars" and "The Capital." His newest title is "Galileo's Dream," to be published in August.

For readers: "In 'The Martians' – my short stories associated with 'Red Mars,' 'Green Mars' and 'Blue Mars' – I suggest a soundtrack of appropriate music for different chapters of (the trilogy). I was writing to a lot of this music and listening to it (for pleasure)."

The selections include Astor Piazzolla ("Tango: Zero Hour"), Gorecki's Third Symphony, the Japanese folk song "Sakura," Bach's "Goldberg Variations" (the Glenn Gould version), Louis Armstrong (the 1946-56 era), Clifford Brown, Charles Mingus, Keith Jarrett's "Köln Concert" and Najma. Plus, Pete Townshend, Van Morrison and Yes.

Writing/editing: "At the end of writing a book, I put on either Beethoven's last five string quartets or Bach's cello suites, something that is non-verbal and cannot distract. Both (composers) are very busy, like gears grinding or thoughts thinking. They signal to me that I am near the end of a book and I should flog myself."

Jan Burke of Long Beach

Author of the 12-book Irene Kelly mystery series. Her new book, "The Messenger," is a supernatural-thriller stand-alone.

For readers: "I've referenced a song (in a book) only once, Duke Ellington's 'All the Things You Are.' Other than that, it's their choice."

Writing/editing: "Something without lyrics, although I often listen to something with lyrics at first to get me rolling. For 'Goodnight Irene,' I listened to Leonard Cohen's 'Joan of Arc' with Jennifer Warnes. For 'Hocus," (it was) "Ancient Music for a Modern Age.' For my new book, it was 'The Carnival of the Animals.' I also listen to opera duets, medieval madrigals, Gregorian chants and Blue Man Group."

Linda Lael Miller

Author of 50-plus books of women's fiction in 12 series. Her new title is "A McKettrick Christmas."

For readers and herself: "Country music. My all-time favorites are Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris and Randy Travis."

Writing/editing: "Complete silence."

Herman and Roma Rosenblat

When she first read it, Sacramento agent Andrea Hurst loved Herman Rosenblat's story of surviving a Nazi camp with the help of a girl outside the fence – a girl he met again years later and married.

Hurst loved it enough to want to help him realize his dream of making it a book.

But the story Rosenblat wrote in a magazine, and told on Oprah, and finally recounted in the book "Angel at the Fence," blew up over the holidays.

It was questioned by skeptical experts. Rosenblat finally, emotionally, admitted to Hurst that the relationship through the concentration camp fence never happened.

The book's planned publication has been canceled.

Once Hurst discovered she'd been lied to, she had to ask herself, "Why didn't I question it?"

Her answer is in the heart-grabbing nature of the story.

Rosenblat, who was interned in a subcamp of Buchenwald under the Nazis, had claimed that a girl outside tossed apples over the fence to him.

He claimed he later met Roma Radzicki in New York, found out she was the girl at the fence and married her. They have been married for 50 years.

"When a story hits on a very deep level like this one did … there's something different that happens," Hurst said. "You don't step back and question it."

But there had never been a girl at the fence.

Hurst had encountered the story at a writers conference.

She's worked in publishing for 20 years, seven as an agent. She also teaches writers.

When she saw the story in "Guideposts," she noted there was a biographical note in which Rosenblat said it was his dream to produce a book.

She contacted him, helped his manuscript get polished and found a publisher, Berkley Books, a unit of Penguin.

The book was due to come out in February, but Berkley withdrew it after learning from Hurst about the fabrication.

"The minute I knew, I took a quick walk to calm down and I called the president of Berkley immediately," Hurst said.

She's found it difficult to sleep and finds her trust damaged. She will not work with another memoir, she said.

"No one wants to be lied to," she said.

The publishing industry has been lied to repeatedly by authors portraying fictionalized incidents as memoirs.

The most notable was James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces." Another notable fiction was "Love and Consequences," which falsely purported to be a young woman's gang memoir.

Hurst seemed to be perplexed by authorial misrepresentations, saying it's the quality of the story, not whether it's true or not that matters.

Had it been nonfiction, "I couldn't have been affected any more deeply by 'Kite Runner,' " she said.

If Hurst finds any good in the situation, it's that the integrity of books has been upheld by not publishing a lie.

"I'm happy about that," she said.

Music fans browse the racks at the Beat in midtown Sacramento. The store's inventory includes lots of 45-rpm records for under a buck.

Editor's note: It's a new year and these are tough times, but not so tough that you can't find some cost-cutting detours when spending your money. Today through Sunday in Living Here, we'll offer a daily dose of 15 ways to save on food and wine, outdoor activities, entertainment, home and garden, and caring for yourself and your family. Keep the change.

• Today: Spend less on books and media

• Tuesday: Families can save

• Wednesday: Grocery-store savings

• Thursday: Outdoor fun for less

• Friday: Bargains around town

• Saturday: Saving around the house

• Sunday: Cutting medical and fitness costs

Share your great money-saving tips by clicking here.

When it comes to books and media, free and cheap seem more the rule than the exception.

You can spend $50 or more for a nice book or more than $30 for a movie date, but music on the radio is free, the library is free and even video rentals are often just a couple of bucks.

Here are a few of our favorite cheap books and media thrills:

Give a book, get a book

Try swapping a good read with a friend. (See goodreads.com for some ideas.)

Some book lovers (including this reporter) stock up on extra copies of their favorites so they can give them away.

Poems for all

Richard Hansen of the Book Collector produces tiny poetry pamphlets that he gives away for free at his midtown Sacramento store. He hands them out to folks who have distributed them around the world.

Take a retro spin

How about a record for 98 cents? The Beat in midtown has a bin of a thousand 45-rpm singles for that price as well as other nearly extinct music and video options.

"We're stupid enough to still carry cassettes," says owner Rob Fauble, who also has 50-cent comic books.

The Beat has enough goodies, he says, to provide a weekend of entertainment for $10.

Free downloads

It's obvious that you can get free stuff off the Internet if you have a computer, so we'll just quickly mention some of the options:

• Thousands of great books are available at Project Gutenberg and Google Books, though you can't read the whole book online.

• Music Web sites offer a few free downloads, but some sites are full of free songs. Among them are artistserver.com, epitonic.com and garageband.com.

• Free software for your computer can be found at sites like sourceforge.net. Phone applications, like those found at Apple's online iPhone store, are often free or as cheap as 99 cents.

Some sites, including hulu.com, allow you to stream TV shows and movies for free. Legally, we might add.

Another part of the library

If you want to keep a book – without racking up fines – most libraries these days have a used-book rack for the benefit of the Friends of the Library.

For as little as a dime or a quarter, you can get books, magazines and sometimes videos and CDs.

Among our favorite locations are the libraries in South Land Park, Antelope, Roseville and Carmichael.

Free Comics Day

Empire Comics on Arden Way is among the many shops that give away comic books on the first Saturday in May.

Info at empirescv.com.

Art for the masses

This stretches the boundaries of "cheap," but $5 or $10 for a handmade work of art is truly inexpensive.

The art department at American River College has an old vending machine converted to sell works of art – drawings, prints, even tiny sculptures – that would fit in a cigarette pack.

A similar machine is housed at the Crocker Art Museum in downtown Sacramento.

Craigslist

Not only does craigslist.com connect you with cheap goods, but also offers books and CDs under the "Free" category.

Catch a book

Bookcrossing.com encourages catch-and-release reading. Members leave a book somewhere in public and record the info online.

If the finder chooses to participate, he or she will record the find and then leave it for someone else to find when they're done.

Libraries galore

Everybody knows about the public library, but when you have a special need, consider a specialized library.

Sacramento has, among others, the California History Room of the State Library; the Lavender Library, Archives and Cultural Exchange; Turn Verein's library of German materials; the Sacramento County Law Library; Sutter Resource Library for medical information; and the California State Railroad Museum Library.

Freecycling

Freecycling is the concept of giving things away instead of trashing them or reselling them.

Freecycle.org facilitates freecycling.

It's not about trading – that's a no-no. You give stuff away and you take stuff off other people's hands, but there's no tit for tat.

Playaway

We all know about the library, but do you know that most libraries now circulate Playaways?

The Playaway is a preloaded audio book, complete with player and, sometimes, headphones.

The newspaper

Hello! We still think the daily newspaper is a bargain, though you can get some of what we offer online or on TV.

If you think 50 cents is too steep, there are free newspapers out there. Take a look around and find alternative weeklies, music tabloids and neighborhood newspapers.

Government info

We're not talking entertainment here. We're talking basic, practical information: "How To Get a Job in the Federal Government" ($3), "National Park System Map and Guide"($2.75), "How To Maintain Your Tires" (free).

"Free" is qualified. Your taxes may have helped pay for that. Check out www.pueblo.gsa.gov.

Free magazines

In addition to finding magazine content online, you can get free, full-year magazine subscriptions.

"There's fishing magazines, there's wedding magazines, there's parenting magazines, there's health magazines, there's men's magazines, there's cooking magazines," says Jay Whisler, owner of all-freemagazines.com.

His site doesn't give you the magazines.

"We point you to where the great offers are," Whisler says.

Sacramento Bee photo illustration

We've become a society of multitaskers, and it's no secret that some (Gen Y) are more adept at it than others (baby boomers).

So here's a question, and be honest: Can you read a book and listen to music at the same time? Or does one distract from the other?

That's a multitasking issue touched upon by JWT, one of the world's largest specialists in "global brand communication" (read: an advertising/marketing agency), in its recently released trends forecast for 2009.

In JWT-speak, this particular trend – branded "distraction as entertainment" – goes like this: "Understanding that people do more than one thing at a time, content creators are turning what could be a negative (distraction) into a positive (an immersive experience). By layering a multitude of media into entertainment, they are creating content designed for simultaneous engagement."

For our purposes, part of that picture is when authors compile playlists in tandem with their books, says JWT. The idea is for readers to listen to certain pieces of music while they read the authors' books.

I phoned JWT's director of trend-spotting, Ann Mack, to ask how trends are, well, spotted. Essentially, last year JWT spent time "talking with influencers and experts in several sectors," she explained, and connected that input with "the insights we garnered from thousands of consumers, to see how ready they are to take on cultural shifts."

As for the books-music issue, JWT was partly inspired by a posting on the Web site of mega-selling young-readers author Stephenie Meyer, www.stepheniemeyer.com. With her four-book "Twilight Saga" vampire series, Meyer has become a pop culture star among teenage girls.

As Meyer says on her site, "I can't write without music. This, combined with the fact that writing 'Twilight' (the first book) was a very visual experience, prompted me to collect (some of) my favorite songs into a soundtrack for the book. ... Here's the music I hear in my head while reading the book." She lists 13 tracks by the likes of Muse, Linkin Park and Billy Joel.

Long before "Twilight," British writer and veteran concert-goer Nick Hornby published the novel "High Fidelity." The author, his 1995 book and the 2000 movie starring John Cusack and Jack Black all are obsessive and compulsive about music. Ditto Hornby's 2002 "31 Songs," essays on songs dear to him.

To hear samples of the "High Fidelity" movie soundtrack (Bob Dylan, the Kinks, Elvis Costello, Velvet Underground), go to www.hollywoodrecords.go. com/highfidelity.

Plus, Hornby recently posted his playlist of a dozen songs that "flavored 2008 for me" at http:// papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com (Queen, James Brown, Luke Doucet); search for "Hornby."

Then there's the case of Charles Frazier's 1997 National Book Award-winning "Cold Mountain." Though an official music CD was not released with the hardback book, a CD of bluegrass tunes later accompanied the paperback edition. It was a playlist of 18 songs "inspired by (the novel) at 1999's MerleFest and performed by an all-star band of bluegrass musicians led by Tim O'Brien, Dirk Powell and John Hermann (www.amazon.com)."

In addition, a movie soundtrack CD was issued for "Cold Mountain," the 2003 movie; it features such artists as Jack White and Alison Krauss.

More to the point, a couple of authors we can think of released music CDs as companions to their books, a clever marketing scheme that, surprisingly, never caught on.

"I haven't seen (the book-CD companionship) in years," said David Brown, assistant director of publicity for Atria Books.

"It's not a trend," he added, echoing others in the publishing industry. "It was probably an idea a bunch of (editors and publicists) had at around the same time."

In 2003, best-seller Michael Connelly published the ninth in his Harry Bosch PI series, "Lost Light." The buzz at the time was that it was the first Bosch book written in third person instead of first person. That little upset nearly overshadowed the accompanying CD "Dark Sacred Night," which Connelly called "the music I listen to (which) ends up in the books, usually on Harry Bosch's CD player. It's the music of Harry Bosch." The author and his character both are jazz aficionados.

In 2005, Irish mystery-thriller writer John Connolly released "Black Angel," another dark entry in his superlative Charlie Parker series. Part of the initial press run came with a CD, "Voices From the Dark."

"The songs have resonances for me and Parker," he writes on his Web site, www.johnconnollybooks.com. The CD features haunting sounds by the Triffids, Seven, Hem, the Walkabouts, Blue Nile and others. Connolly's site also refers to "a second collection, more eclectic than the first," with tracks by Nickel Creek, the Delgados, the Czars and a dozen more.

I recently overheard a 20-something woman say to her Gen Y friend, "I just couldn't live without my BlackBerry!"

Yes, we've come a long way from communicating by smoke signal and drumbeat – though some say text messaging is a step backward in those directions.

This thought-provoking mélange of titles looks at communication in different ways. And, yes, there are lessons to be learned by all.

• "The Art of the Personal Letter" by Margaret Shepherd (Broadway, $16, 240 pages): Noted calligrapher Shepherd takes readers by the hand to lead them through the process of a fading art. In the chapter "How To Find the Right Words," she lists do's and don'ts for writing love letters, holiday letters, congratulatory letters, letters of condolence and the like. Neatness counts, as do type of stationery and choice of pen.

• "Send: Why People Email So Badly and How To Do It Better" by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe (Knopf, $19.95, 288 pages): As e-mailing is a relatively new form of communication, not many guidelines have been established – until now. "Think before you send" is the message here, and the authors spell out many useful scenarios for senders as well as recipients. Here's a tip: "When a conversation is over, you don't need to reply."

• "Convergence Culture" by Henry Jenkins (NYU, $18.95, 336 pages): New media won't replace old media but will merge with it in ways that will affect our culture, Jenkins contends. His essays on reality TV, movie spoilers, the Harry Potter "nation," YouTube and Photoshop will make you think. Jenkins is director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• "The Numerati" by Stephen Baker (Houghton Mifflin, $26, 256 pages): With computer power in a networked world comes risk, writes journalist Baker. The "numerati," he says, are "members of a global elite of computer scientists and mathematicians who are busy analyzing our every move." Bits of our personal data are collected each time we use a credit card, make a cell-phone call or surf the Web, he writes, and that information is being used to manipulate us.

• "The Big Switch" by Nicholas Carr (W.W. Norton, $16.95, 224 pages): Changes in the digital age are the focus here. The author predicts a future in which businesses and individuals will "abandon their traditional computer systems" and "subscribe to simple services provided by (companies such as) salesforce.com, Amazon Web Services and Google." Carr cautions that the domino effect will lead to "corporations and governments becoming ever more adept at manipulating our behavior."

'09 reading, Chapter 1

No doubt your New Year's resolutions include reading more. Here's a list to get you going:

• "Dream It ... List It ... Do It!" by the "Life List" experts at 43things.com (a "goal-setting community"), with Lia Steakley (Workman, $9.95, 464 pages): Concise, witty, useful – this could be the perfect self-help book for the new year, if you're determined to accomplish things as yet undone. The 43 chapters include "Travel More," "Find Love" and "Make a Difference," and offer checklists and testimonials on how to accomplish those goals. Here's one: "Wake up happy."

• "Best-Loved Chinese Proverbs," compiled by Theodora Lau (Collins, $12.95, 176 pages): Much wisdom and inspiration reside in these pages, such as: "To be unhappy over what one lacks is to waste what one already possesses." And: "Reticence builds a fortress in the mind."

• "The Book Lover" by Ali Smith (Anchor, $15.95, 480 pages): Using memoir and excerpts from works by her favorite authors, Smith shares her lifelong delight of reading well-known and obscure writers. A discovery for serious readers.

• "Nemesis: The Final Case of Eliot Ness" by Eliot Bernhardt (Ballantine, $26, 368 pages; on sale Jan. 13): In real-life 1930s Chicago, you will recall, federal agent Eliot Ness and his band of "Untouchables" put a big dent in organized crime. This novel has Ness in Cleveland, tracking a serial killer who wants nothing more than to destroy him and his spotless reputation.

• "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez (Dutton, $26.95, 448 pages): This is a rare case of a self-published novel being picked up by a traditional publishing house. When a young gaming pioneer dies, he leaves the legacy of a "computer process" intent on world domination. The Daemon program is aided in its intent by a group of super-smart true believers.

• "Lost River" by David Fulmer (Houghton Mifflin, $25, 336 pages): This is the fourth outing for Fulmer's Creole detective, Valentin St. Cyr, who works the mean streets of New Orleans' red-light district, Storyville, in the early 1900s. When a body turns up in a bordello – and several more follow – St. Cyr reluctantly takes the case. The twist is that he's been set up to become the prime suspect.

• "Border Moonlight" by Amanda Scott (Forever, $6.99, 432 pages): The latest in the Folsom-based historical romance writer's "Border" series features her trademarks: strong-willed women and warrior men, mystery and intrigue, dashes of humor and wit, deep characterization, complex plots and, above all, historical and geographic accuracy in the days of ancient Scotland.

• "Three Weeks To Say Goodbye" by C.J. Box (St. Martin's, $24.95, 352 pages): Box is best known for his nine-book Joe Pickett series, starring a Wyoming game warden who solves mysteries. This stand-alone thriller tracks a couple who have adopted an infant daughter. Now the biological father wants the baby back, a maneuver that's part of a bigger and more sinister picture, as the couple discover.

• "Tooth and Claw" by Jo Walton (Orb, $15.95, 336 pages): This World Fantasy Award winner tells a story of a dysfunctional family whose problems are compounded by the death of the patriarch. Intrigue, politics, class conflict, true love and tragedy merge for a good tale. Oh, did I mention that all the characters are dragons?

BORDERS

Hardcover fiction

1. The Tales of Beedle the Bard – J.K. Rowling

2. Eclipse – Stephenie Meyer

3. Breaking Dawn – Stephenie Meyer

4. Twilight – Stephenie Meyer

5. Scarpetta – Patricia Cornwell

Hardcover nonfiction

1. The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch

2. Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

3. Dewey – Vicki Myron

4. American Lion – Jon Meacham

5. Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics – Ina Garten

AMAZON.COM

Hardcover fiction

1. Breaking Dawn – Stephenie Meyer

2. Eclipse – Stephenie Meyer

3. The Tales of Beedle the Bard – J.K. Rowling

4. The Twilight Saga: Slipcased – Stephenie Meyer

5. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle – David Wroblewski

Hardcover nonfiction

1. Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

2. In Defense of Food – Michael Pollan

3. The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch

4. Good to Great – Jim Collins

5. Smogtown – Chip Jacobs

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION

Hardcover fiction

1. A Mercy – Toni Morrison

2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows

3. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle – David Wroblewski

4. The Private Patient – P.D. James

5. Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri

Hardcover nonfiction

1. Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

2. American Lion – Jon Meacham

3. The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch

4. Hot, Flat, and Crowded – Thomas L. Friedman

5. Dewey – Vicki Myron

If you have questions about the practices of your managed-care coverage, ask the experts at the state Department of Managed Health Care. They take up issues ranging from difficulties getting an appointment to the denial of a doctor's recommendation for treatment.

Last November, I went to the emergency room because I had a severe migraine. At the time of the visit, I had a primary and a secondary health insurance company. I went to the closest facility that happened to be part of my primary insurance company's network, and they paid a large portion of the bill. But my secondary plan, an HMO, refused to pay the remaining portion because the emergency room that I went to was not part of the HMO's network, and they didn't agree that the situation required emergency care. Any assistance you could provide in resolving this matter would be greatly appreciated.

– Laurel Schamber, Galt

If your health plan disputes the need for emergency-room services or refuses to reimburse the cost of emergency services, a consumer can submit the dispute, at no cost, to the Department of Managed Health Care's independent medical review (IMR) program to determine whether a reasonable person would have believed that the medical condition or symptoms justified seeking emergency services.

If a reasonable person would have concluded that a potential emergency medical condition existed, your health plan is obligated to cover the emergency services, no matter where the services were received. A health plan cannot require its members to get emergency services and care at in-network hospitals.

After receiving your complaint, the department notified your secondary health plan that an IMR was being scheduled. After the health plan received this notification, it made an administrative decision to overturn its previous denial and pay for your emergency-room visit.

Working out problems with a single health plan can be complicated enough, but when you have secondary insurance or a supplemental health care policy, payment issues can get twice as complicated. When you do have more than one health plan or health insurance policy, both plans need to coordinate your benefits to avoid payment delays. If you are scheduling routine services, you should always contact both plans before you receive services and let each plan know about your multiple health coverages.

If you find that you can't make sense of who should be paying for what, we encourage you to contact an agent at the department's Help Center by calling (888) 466-2219 so we can help you sort through it all.

Old joke: Guy walks into a health club. Goes up to a trainer and tells him, "Dude, I need to lose 15 pounds, fast." Trainer says, "OK, let's cut off your arm."

Newer joke, almost as ridiculous: In March, during an episode of the TV show "Lipstick Jungle," stars Brooke Shields and Lindsay Price are lunching and dishing with blond bombshell Kim Raver, who is looking guilty for looking so good.

Shields: "Did you color your hair?"

Price: "She says it's exercise. She's lying."

Raver: "All right, I'm going to come clean. It's the Hollywood Cookie Diet."

As fast as you could say "Google search," another fad diet exploded. Desperate dieters (are there any other kind?) flocked to the cookie diet's home page, where they breathlessly learned that replacing breakfast and lunch with two cookies at each meal and then having a "sensible" dinner would make them lose 15 pounds a month.

Meanwhile, registered dietitians everywhere rolled their eyes, and physicians snorted with derision.

Throw another get-slim-quick scheme onto the slag heap of faddish claims, alongside such classics as the cabbage soup diet, grapefruit diet, chocolate diet, popcorn diet, not to mention that Mount Rushmore of weight-loss plans (Atkins, Pritikin, Jenny Craig and Tarnower) and those geographic compass points (Beverly Hills, South Beach, Brazilian Burn).

Once, just once, American Dietetic Association spokeswoman Andrea Giancoli would like to see a diet book based on, you know, reality shoot its way up the best-sellers list.

"But eating a balanced diet and exercising isn't sexy," says Giancoli, a registered dietitian in Los Angeles. "I could write that book, but no one would buy it."

Then again, even that old burn-more- calories-than-you-consume mantra won't give impatient diet patients the drastic shedding of poundage they crave as much as a slice of double fudge chocolate cheese cake.

No, the only proven surefire weight loss scheme for everyone is the Amputation Diet. Web site impresario Tom Nardone, whose www.faddiet.com serves as a repository for nutritional claims, has posted a cheeky table of weight loss body purging ideas, ranging from a haircut (2 to 6 ounces) to donating a kidney (3 pounds) to amputating a leg (15 to 45 pounds).

"It's proven," Nardone, exuding the faux fervor of a huckster, says from his Michigan home. "Cut off a limb. It works."

Short of that, experts say the most reliable diet out there is this slow, steady and glazed- expression inducing plan: Burn more calories than you consume.

Not that you'll see that mantra touted in TV ads all January and waiting in your inbox each morning. People would rather believe that the pounds will "melt off" in mere days by either the gimmick of focusing on one food or dutifully avoiding one or two groups of food.

"Our society is geared toward thinness," Giancoli says. "There are all these pills and books and diets and gimmicks that are promising to help us. And it doesn't matter whether it's been proven that they don't work. We fall for it every time because we're so desperate."

Like hemlines and hairstyles, diets come in and out of fashion. Every 15 years or so, the famed cabbage soup diet – first made popular by '50s housewives – makes a comeback, as does the touted grapefruit diet, which has been proved time and again to be ineffective for everything other than preventing scurvy.

Or, there are ingenious reincarnations. The Beverly Hills Diet (heavy on mangoes and other exotic fruit) now is reconfigured as the Acai Berry Diet. Atkins' seminal high-protein, no-carb diet of the early 1970s begat Atkins II in the early 2000s, which begat the South Beach Diet, sort of an Atkins Lite. The low-carb, low calorie Scarsdale Diet has morphed into the Skinny Bitch fruit-and-fiber diet du jour.

Then there are the simply weird offerings with no solid medical groundwork: In the 1970s, the Sleeping Beauty Diet actually sedated people for days so they simply wouldn't eat. Today, there is the Eat Right for Your Type, a diet specifically tailored for your blood type.

And what about those cleansing "detox" diets celebrities always are hyping? Medical professionals say to flush 'em.

"We have built-in detox systems in the liver and kidneys, and skin that does a bang-up job detoxing on its own," Giancoli says.

What makes these diets endure – aside from their celebrity cachet – is how they expand on what Kaiser Permanente Sacramento registered dietitian Monica Randel calls "a kernel of medical truth."

"Every diet book on hand has something that's accurate," Randel says. "But they tend to take that and exclude everything else."

To suss out fact from fiction in diet claims, we asked registered dieticians to weigh in on the three trends currently dominating the dieting landscape:

• High protein, low fat: Also known as the Atkins Generation of diets, these rely on a regimen of high protein (a.k.a. fat) and extremely low carbohydrate intake where the goal for dieters is to reach "ketosis."

That's when the body, which normally runs on energy-producing glucose, starts to burn ketones, a molecule from fat, as a fuel source.

"It's a survival mechanism and, in principal, you've got to wonder whether that's the way we were meant to be – in a ketotic state," says Dianne Hyson, a registered dietitian and chairwoman of the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences/Dietetics at California State University, Sacramento. "You lose weight because the body thinks it's starving and these mechanisms kick in."

While such a diet high in saturated fats and eschewing nearly all carbohydrates has been proved to reduce weight in the short term, medical professionals worry about the long-term risks. The body in ketosis becomes highly acidic and research has yet to be done on its effects on areas such as bone loss, heart disease and kidney function.

"Every time you break down a protein molecule, you have to get rid of the nitrogen involved," Hyson says. "(Nutritionists) worry about what happens long term to a healthy kidney when you've amped its workload?"

Hyson says Atkins dieters don't last long because restricting grains and fruit can lead to constipation and headaches. "Plus, there's just a lack of variety in the diet."

So why does Atkins and its ilk remain so popular?

"I think people just want to be told that it's OK to eat bacon," Hyson says.

• Glycemic Index: Originally designed for diabetics to monitor the effects of foods on blood-sugar levels, the low-glycemic diets flooding the market are being adapted and adopted for the rest of us.

The theory is that carbohydrates that elevate blood sugar quickly and plummet dramatically should be avoided in favor of carbs that are digested slowly and make only minor changes in blood-sugar levels. Low-glycemic foods often are high in fiber and low in fat.

So, what's the problem with this diet?

"Everybody digests food differently," Kaiser's Randel says. "The glycemic indexes in a specific food can vary as much as 100 percent in a patient. It depends on what you eat that food with, among other factors.

"Even in our diabetic unit, we're downplaying the use of glycemic index. The thing that's quote unquote 'good' about it is that high-glycemic foods tend to be the ones that aren't the greatest choices… .

"But if you followed the low glycemic trail, you couldn't eat carrots. Come on. It's not a great thing to put all your stock in."

Studies have shown that those on low glycemic diets showed a decrease in LDL, the so-called "bad" cholesterol. Not surprising, since many of the high-glycemic foods are processed baked goods.

But adhering to the low-glycemic doctrine can backfire. Among offerings that fit in the low-glycemic diet are ice cream and fructose-sweetened beverages. And foods that nutrient-rich foods dieticians promote, such as potatoes and most fruit, are high on the glycemic scale.

• Monounsaturated fat: Riding the wave of the antioxidant craze, monounsaturated fats have seen a spike in popularity. People who once eschewed nuts, seeds, olives and avocados as fattening now see them as an alternative to carbohydrates. Plus, the foods have anti-inflammatory properties.

The key, though, is moderation.

"I actually think one using monounsaturated fats is healthier than many others," Hyson says. "But you need a balanced diet and exercise for it to help you lose weight."

But the two popular diets espousing monounsaturated fats – "Flat Belly Diet" and "Skinny Bitch Diet" – restrict total calorie intake to 1,400 to 1,600 calories. That might be difficult to maintain, long term, says the ADA's Giancoli.

"Limited research found that a high-carb diet led to more accumulation of fat in the abdomen vs. a high-monounsaturated fat diet," she says. "It's a stretch to conclude that they lead to a flat abdomen."

Kaiser's Randel, however, says she has the answer to the flat-belly problem: "Exercise and eating less will do it."

I have great health but a loud digestive system. I have been trying to persuade my wife that there are health benefits to my digestive gases, but she does not believe me. Can you ladies shed light on this?

– Don W., Sacramento

This is one of the questions you wish you could ask your doctor but are often too embarrassed to ask.

A recent study showed that hydrogen sulfide, the gas that is responsible for making flatulation so smelly, can also lower blood pressure.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine just published data showing that hydrogen sulfide produced in the blood vessels of mice reduced their blood pressure by relaxing blood vessels – thus preventing hypertension.

Mice that were missing the gene needed to make hydrogen sulfide had blood pressure spikes that were 20 percent higher than their normal counterparts.

What does this mean for us humans? Well, the jury's still out, but it could be that those of us who are skilled at making the stink bombs actually are protecting our hearts.

Here are some other fun facts you may not know about flatulence:

• Flatulence is a cocktail of gases, namely carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen, methane and sulfur. Sulfur is produced by bacteria in the intestine, and it is the odor culprit in flatulence.

• Passing gas 14 to 23 times a day is normal. Most people produce 1 to 4 pints of gas a day.

• Sugars that aggravate gas are raffinose, lactose, fructose and sorbitol. Raffinose is found in beans, cabbage, brussels sprouts and broccoli. Lactose is the natural sugar in milk. Fructose is found in onions, artichokes, pears and wheat. Sorbitol can be found in apples, peaches and prunes.

• Most starches, including potatoes, corn, pasta and wheat, produce gas as they are broken down in the large intestine. Rice is the only starch that does not cause gas.

• Aerophagia, or swallowing air, is another source of gas. Reducing gum chewing, stopping smoking, and eating more slowly all help reduce aerophagia.

If you want to reduce your daily flatulence, a good way to start is by keeping a food diary, especially on the days that you are particularly odiferous. This allows you to track and change what you eat based on which foods tend to aggravate your flatulence.

You may notice that cooking certain foods may decrease their gas-producing qualities. Beans and certain vegetables fall into this category.

Also, you may be lactose- intolerant. Up to eighty percent of adults are lactose- intolerant to a certain extent, and this may aggravate flatulence.

See if cutting down on milk helps. If it does, you may want to try dairy products that contain lactase (the enzyme that breaks down lactose).

You may also find that foods high in sulfur, including garlic, onions, broccoli, meat and eggs, contribute to the smell. Cutting back on these foods may save your relationships.

Alternative remedies for decreasing flatulence include herbs and spices such as cumin, coriander, caraway, Kombu kelp and asafoetida.

Probiotics in a supplement form or in the form of live yogurt or kefir are thought to reduce flatulence when used to restore balance to the normal intestinal bacteria.

So there you have it – pass the stink bombs and save your heart, or fight the fart and save your marriage. We'll refrain from offering advice on this one.