Orlion Blight

@BenduLuke Lord of the Flies was written by William Golding, one of my favorites. It's kinda a shame. He wrote a lot more and, as a result, won the Nobel Prize in literature. Though not exceedingly difficult to find, his other works outside of Lord of the Flies are not widely available. I don't think my school even mentioned any of the above, it was just focused on the one book. He even wrote an alternative history story that debut in a collection alongside a Mervyn Peake story!

It takes a certain amount of...angst... to really enjoy and think Donaldson superior to Tolkien. If I were to be more objective in my listing, Tolkien would be better. But Donaldson set the stage for my reading preferences and I don't know if I would have ever read my top three favorites without him. You haven't read Lord of the Flies?! For Zadie Smith, your best bet is White Teeth. Salman Rushdie? Satanic Verses or Midnight's Children Anthony Powell you HAVE to commit to his 12 book Dance to the Movement of Time. BTW, none of the above is considered fantasy (though Rushdie certainly blurs that line) For Mervyn Peake, it's the Gormenghast books (starting with Titus Groan) John Crowley's most celebrated work is Little, Big. Not my favorite of his, but it's the easiest to find. Catherynne Valente has a wide array of books. From tie in novels (she wrote a Mass Effect and Minecraft book) to Hitchhiker's Guide mixed with Eurovision for adults (Space Opera) to fairy tale retellings (Orphan Tales, Deathless) to beloved middle grade series (Fairyland series) to my precious, wonderfully bizarre and for a niche audience that likes medieval studies Dirge for Prester John!

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. Because I haven't started enough trilogies yet

I'll get it on this. First up, Spanish Metal Sailor Moon An Aladdin song, this one in English Now, with this cover in the Japanese language, you might think I'm just posting metal covers of anime songs from the same guy And you would have spoken too soon!

*manic laughter* So, I guess I'll add "exciting and cool announcements" to the list of phrases Brandon uses and does not understand. It's a short list, the other item on my list is "standalone novel".

Toll the Hounds is the most important Malazan book As far as Esslemont, Path of Ascendency is his best work to date. I feel with a lot of the Empire books, he got the "Esslemont will tell these stories or they won't be told at all" straw and he may not have been interested in most of them

No problem, I think that, despite generational differences in experience, we can all agree that Tolkien's greatest contribution to international society was:

Harold and His Purple Crayon

I don't even know who I am!

Don't let me frighten you, I haven't read anything Tolkien related in over a decade, it'd be very easy to bring up something I don't know from basic texts.

It's steadily pouring rain today, so it's time to light up the briar and listen to some moody songs (not to be confused with Moody Blues)

The Apocalypse Guard will now take place in Fortnite!

@Hoiditthroughthegrapevine *whispers* Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written by Robert Louis Stevenson!

Tough question, basically because in recent years, I've relegated the status of "favorite author" to living ones. I'll try anyway. First, to keep with your form, I cut my teeth on Oz books, Burgess Bedtime stories and The Wind in the Willows. Later, I would read 1001 Arabian Knights and the entirety of Dante's Divine Comedy (I read a bunch of Goosebumps as well, I wasn't a complete dork). I was introduced to Tolkien through the Rankin/Bass movies and had my first encounter with the books when my mom read the Silmarillion to me. I got my first copy of the Lord of the Rings in fifth grade and read it at about the same time as the Divine Comedy. I finally read the Hobbit in seventh grade. Around that time I got Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov and got into that genre of science fiction. I read Dune, the Mithgar books, the Wheel of Time and the first Goodkind book. Around 11th grade I was introduced to Stephen R Donaldson with the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. It ruined the fantasy genre for me (I liked it a lot) so from there, reading was classic science fiction, Stephen Crane and John Steinbeck. Eventually I read Mervyn Peake and felt Titus Groan was the zenth of fantasy writing (in a way, I still do). This restored my faith in the fantasy genre and I started reading it again, realizing that what I liked to read was stylistic writing. I would read Mistborn when it was announced that Brandon would finish the Wheel of Time. I still intended to finish that series then (I never did). I enjoyed it as fun popcorn reading and that's why I read Cosmere books to this day. The result, though, is that if I rank favorite authors, he isn't ever on the list because, well, I adore stylistic prose and that's just not what he writes. So, time for rankings: 10) Ernest Hemingway 9) John Steinbeck 8) William Golding 7) Stephen R Donaldson 6) Salman Rushdie 5) Zadie Smith 4)Anthony Powell 3)Mervyn Peake 2)Catherynne M Valente 1)John Crowley Honorable mentions to Steven Erickson, R Scott Bakker, Ford Maddox Ford for personal reading development reasons. There's also plenty of great authors not on this list like Jemisin, Chakraborty and Darcie Little Badger. Brandon Sanderson fills the role that used to belong to Michael Crichton and Tony Hillerman: an enjoyable author that put out books that were entertaining with some regularity and that were mainstream enough that when I told people I liked to read, I could mention their names along with a couple other authors so that the conversation wasn't shut down.

Just finished Ms Marvel Army of One (essentially #1-12 of vol 2)

That is a much closer to how I envision Kelsier!

That's the kind of....<insert favorite swear here>... that I'm talking about! As mentioned above, it does not look like that's the case here, it's just part of some advertisement ahead of the release of The Lost Metal.

Well...I guess that's fine... so long as there isn't plot relevant information that's only available in Fortnite..

Seems like my internet experience involves a bunch of encounters with the stereotypical gatekeeping types, so I defaulted to that view. I'm sorry I overreacted.

Because my qualifications are so bizarre that they would never be taken seriously as such soooo maybe tone down your policing?

Then I will continue to add bizarre and random qualifications to being a true Lord of the Rings nerd! You're not a TRUE Lord of the Rings nerd unless you've played the Middle Earth CCG released by Iron Crown Enterprises!

Well, if we're being technical, the Silmarillion was written by Guy Gaverial Kay with the editorial help of Christopher Tolkien and some unfinished manuscripts from Tolkien. Christopher Tolkien would later present his father's writings and the evolution of his legendarium through Unfinished Tales and the twelve volume History of Middle Earth. Much later, bits and peices from the previous were concatenated together to form the three books "Children of Hurín", "Beren and Luthien" and "The Fall of Gondolin". So, technically, Tolkien wrote all that. As far as completed works set in Middle Earth? Just The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. That the Silmarillion is considered "canon" is due to its availability over the decades, as Christopher's understanding of what his father wanted to do with those stories evolved as he went through the various unfinished manuscripts. The latest understanding was that Tolkien wanted to do a loose trilogy (the final three books I mentioned) and who knows what the other stuff would have become, if anything. So yeah, anything outside of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is both authoritative and not authoritative because Tolkien did not finalize any of it, his son changed his mind on what was meant to be and that's all we got!

Fair, you'll need all the prep you can get if you're going to challenge the Tolkien Champion!

But that one doesn't even have Tolkien's unfinished tale about time travel!

You forgot Balrogs! The Fall of Gondolin is notable for being the first time Balrogs fell in battle! Someone hasn't been reviewing their Book of Lost Tales!