BEST AUTHOR BEST : LAURA DAVE

'' I Love '' Heartburn '' by Nora Ephron, in a way that makes me blush,'' says the author of '' The Last Thing He Told Me '' and the new sequel, '' The First Time I Saw Him.'' [ Taylor Swift helped with that one. ]

.-  What books are on your night stand?

I'm usually reading a day book and a night book simultaneously. My current night read is '' The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,'' by Kiran Desai. 

I have two day reads at the moment : '' Scorched Earth,'' by Tiana Clark, and '' Wrong Norma, '' by Anne Carson.

Barbara Kingsolver's '' High Tide in Tucson '' is also on my night stand [ where it always is ], as is Stephen Curry's '' Shot Ready,'' which I am rēading with my son.

,-  How do you organize your books?

Maybe it's sense memory, but even with the haphazard system I have in place [ a strange combination of stacks based on genre, special groupings of favorites and a lot of color coordination].

I am always able to find them

.-  Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?

When I was a teenager, I was hired at a bookstore and I got in trouble during my first [ and only ] shift for reading a book in the back when I was supposed to be doing many things that weren't that.

.-  What's the last great book you read?

Patrick Radden Keefe's new book, '' London Falling : A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth,'' which is out this spring.

.-  What's your favorite book no one else has heard of?

One of Antonya Nelson's early short story collections, '' In the Land of Men.'' 

When I was 22, I quit my [ admittedly terrible ] film production job to fly to Taos, N. M., and take a writing class with Nelson because of how I felt about that book.

It was an insane thing to do. But that's the kind of writer she is.

.-  How do you approach writing a sequel to a book that seemed wrapped up?

Sequels have a responsibility to answer a question that  readers maybe didn't know they were asking. '' The Sicilian '' is a great example. And, of course, the '' Odyssey,'' which I pay tribute to in '' The First Time I Saw Him.''

I understood the shape of the novel from the start.

I knew the very last sentence, and I knew that I was going to have to go back 40 years into the past to find my way to it.

.-  Tell me about another book that deserves a sequel.

'' Forever,'' by Judy Blume.

This Publishing continues to Part [ 2 ]. The World Students Society thanks Scott Heller.