Having watched the Harry Potter series a couple of times and read the first book, I'm pretty confident the books will enter my upper rankings once I get through them. I doubt they'll unseat Lord of the Rings, being more juvenile and less grand, but I do think the writing is superior. Superior to just about anything I've read.
The Once and Future King had a shot, but its vision was too blurred by its primary source; its pacing was too secondhand.
A Song of Ice and Fire has an obvious opportunity, it's just a lot of text to get through, a lot of suffering, both direct and vicarious. It'll take some time before I can read these all. But I suppose I will, and I suppose they'll make a strong running for my top tier. I wish they were more focused on the things I care most about, though: the Starks and the Throne. There's a ton of miserable subplotting.
The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas is a legacy choice at this point; hard to tell how I'd feel if I encountered it for the first time now, like the movies I call favorites. It's also so weird comparing it to these epic novels. But I can't ignore poetry in any summary conversation of literature.
The Silmarillion is an option. I've read some of it, but haven't established a strong relationship.
The Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid are top-shelf stories for me, though the experience of reading them is ambivalent.
This "favorite books" discussion reveals a clear gap. It can't only be Lord of the Rings that's cemented. I need some stonework to surround it; perhaps some Pillars...
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