My Favorite Books by Brandon Sanderson (a Tier List)

        It's here! Can't believe I didn't do this sooner. I made a tier list of my favorite books in general back in Oct 2022 (which you can find here), but I refrained from adding most of Brandon Sanderson's works since it had been so many years since I had read many of them. On top of that, Brandon has also released, like, 10 books since I wrote that post, so there's a lot to add.

        Important Note: This is my favorites and is reflective of my experience with them, not what I think is the best nor what the books I would suggest the highest. Obviously my experience with them is going to be strongly correlated with how good I think they are, but this is not always the case.
        Prime example: I don't actually think that Allomancer Jak is a better book/short story than Rhythm of War even though it's two spots higher. I just simply had a good time when I read it last and thought it was cute and so I put it in the "Like" tier. Versus Rhythm of War I feel generally meh about, so I put it in the "It's Fine" tier.

        Okay, so I don't want this post to accidentally turn into 'Give my thoughts on every book I've ever read by Brandon Sanderson', but I did want to make write about a few things.

        Three Small Notes To Start

        Legion represents all three Novellas combined.
        I think the main reason I didn't like Legion: Death and Faxes was because the narrator's voice wasn't my favorite.
        The Eleventh Metal surprised me this reread; I really enjoyed it and thought it worked great as a prequel.

        Lux

        Lux almost assuredly is good enough to make it much higher on this list than the spot it landed on (the bottom of "It's Fine"). I started listening to the book expecting it to be to be a novella length, like, 3-6 hours long. I was trying to blitz listen to the book, not paying the greatest attention to exposition/character backstory/things in general since I thought it would be done soon. Just a simple little listen. Well, after getting quite a few hours deep into the story I realized that it was actually 15 hours long in total. I was not mentally prepared for that. I still wanted to finish it and I just kept listening to it even during times I couldn't fully focus on it.
        These incorrect expectations for what the book was going into it really ended up ruining what could have been a much better experience, I think.

        A thought on rereads and why The Hero of Ages remains my favorite book

        Question: What's the most important read-through of a book, the first or any other past that? I really think the first. Many books you're not even going to reread in the first place. On top of that, surprises/twists/revelations can only be experienced fully on the first read-through.
        (An aside here because I think it's interesting: Music I think is the inverse: You can listen to a song so many times and thus the 100th listen experience is much more important than the first imo.)

        I think this factor is relevant in making this tier list. In certain cases, I give some amount of weight to my first read-through of a book. The prime example of this is The Hero of Ages. For many many years now I have said that it's my favorite book and that continues to this day. But for the past couple readthroughs of the Mistborn trilogy, I've actually been preferring Book 1. Same with various Stormlight books, my most recent rereads of Stormlight 1-3 were all a better experience compared to my most recent reread of The Hero of Ages.
        But, and this is a big but, my first readthrough of The Hero of Ages is by far and away my favorite individual readthrough of any book ever. I. Love. That. Book. And it remains my favorite book of all time.

        None of my other first read-through opinions shine nearly as brightly as Hero of Ages, but it is relevant in much smaller ways in a couple parts of my tier list.

        Dreamer

        I read Dreamer for the first time just recently. It's been worming in my brain, and I like it more and more the more I think about it. I went in knowing nothing about it, which I think was important for the experience, so try to go in blind if you can. It's only 20-pages or so long and worth the quick read in my opinion. I have a copy I could lend if anybody is curious.

        Skyward Flight

        Okay, I don't know why I loved the Skyward Flight stories as much as I did, but I really enjoyed them. Should they be put above the likes of Isles of Emberdark, The Well of Ascension, and Tress? Probably not, but, like for some reason I was just having a blast the whole time when I read them, and you'll notice they're my 2nd favorite thing from the Skyward series. I'm not really planning on ever rereading the series because I didn't like the 2nd or 3rd book, though.
        The three are unsorted amongst themselves -- they all blur in my head.

        Emperor's Soul

        Reread this for the first time in a long while and it was simply a delight. Deservedly earned spot #5. Highly recommend, especially if you want something shorter (it's only 100ish pages).

TØP Rap Statistics (Breach and The Line update)

Old Statistics can be found here: https://whateveriwant7.blogspot.com/2024/06/tp-rap-statistics.html

        So the stats here are how many songs by Twenty One Pilots have rap in them and how many don't. I just find it interesting and fun and cool.

        First: Update to previous decisions on previous songs. 

        After consideration, Bandito has been moved to the non-rap category. 

        And Not Today (already time-stamped for the section in question) is still the biggest question mark, but I decided to leave it in the Rap section for now.

        In the previous statistics, there were more songs with rap than without. But 10 out of the 14 songs in Breach do not contain rap, and The Line doesn't contain rap either. This means non-rap has taken the majority.

Here's the stats:

October 2025 Journal Entry

Hades II

        Well, if last month was the month of Silksong, then this month... wasn't really the month of Hades II. I was fully expecting it to be, but it didn't turn out so. I mean, I still spent some time with it (partly in September, to be fair -- it came out September 25th), got to an ending and had fun. But, like, a third of the time compared to Silksong and a quarter of the time compared to Stardew Valley.

        I'm not sure why I didn't like it as much as Hades I. I can recognize the game is great, but idk.

Books

        Got a lot of reading done! Read Isles of Emberdark, reread tons of some of Brandon Sanderson's smaller works, read some of his smaller works for the first time, got around to rereading Hank Green's An Absolutely Remarkable Thing so I could read its sequel A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor.

        Good stuff.

Scheduled out Blogposts and Such

        I referenced last month that I wrote tons of blogposts that I hadn't published yet and that I'd be posting them once per week. Since then I have polished several of them up, made a specific schedule for them, and had a couple more ideas to add into the mix. Most of them are already written, but a few of them are still being worked on (ex. obviously this post alongside the November and December journal entries can't be written until they can. My Twenty One Pilots Tier List is also still a WIP alongside spoilers).

Exercised/Used Exercise Unlocked

        Exercise Unlocked (more specifically, the Loot Boxes you could buy with Sweat Coin that Ryan, Angeles, and I made) got me motivated to exercise a lot more this month than I normally do. It's been great, feeling good. A lot of push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, and squats in the first half of the month, then I kind of transitioned back into playing Pickleball every chance I get.

        Although use of Exercise Unlocked has declined throughout the month (which I'm perfectly fine with; I had no expectations for how long lived it would be), it was great fun to play around with it. 

        It was fun to do just a few more jumping jacks so I could have just enough Sweat Coin to buy another Loot Box. Fun to talk about the meta of Ryan's game he made. Fun to try to collect every family member's trading card and decorate my page. To look at the creative things others did on their pages, look at adorable Melody Inspirational Stickers. Just good fun all around. And maybe it'll spike back up in use at some point, who knows.

Interviews!!!

        Huge progress in terms of my job hunt. Feel very blessed and fortunate. Did many interviews this month for two different jobs, and I think I did really well! Feeling great about the chances I have to get one or both offers. Either opportunity would be wonderful; they're both jobs I really want, so I'm excited for whatever happens. I finished my last round with one of the companies and still have one left with the other.

        Maybe next month I'll return and report that I got neither. I would be very quite sad. But I'm rather hopeful that will not be the case.

Misc.

        Scrabble playing continued 🔥. Dressed up as Kristofferson alongside Hannah as Ashe from Fantastic Mr. Fox for Halloween (Lucas and Hannah did it first -- I just stole Lucas's costume) 🦊. The NBA season has started up again, which I seem to get more and more invested into every year 🏀. Oh, yeah, I had my 25th birthday, lowkey forgot about that for a second 🎂. Thought about writing many times but never did so 🖉.