Good Books:

Having covered anime, manga, visual novels and video games, I thought it was only natural to next include a list of worthwhile books I've read.  Since that includes way too many books, I'll go by authors instead.  The only way to make this rating system fair is to break the authors down into three sections, generic fiction writers, Japanese light novel writers, and non-fiction writers.  For now we'll go with 39 in the fiction category, 27 in the Japanese light novel category, and 34 in the nonfiction category, for a grand total of the top 100 authors of the world:

Fiction: (From a value added perspective, ie, above and beyond any possible adaption it may have received.)

1.  Myself

2.  Robert Jordan

3.  Orson Scott Card

4.  Piers Anthony

5.  Fred Saberhagen
6.  Charles Dickens
7.  Fyodor Dostoyevsky
8.  E. E. Doc Smith
9.  David Zindell
10.  James Clavell
11.  Timothy Zahn

12.  Katherine Kerr
13.  Terry Goodkind

14.  Margaret Weiss/Tracy Hickman

15.  Kate Elliott
16.  Jennifer Roberson

17.  Harold Covington  

18.  David Eddings

19.  William Shakespeare 
20.  Jane Austen

21.  Tom Wolfe

22.  George Eliot 
23.  Samuel Richardson
24.  Leo Tolstoy 

25.  Ayn Rand

26.  J.R.R. Tolkien
27.  James Fenimore Cooper

28.  H.G. Wells
29.  John Steinbeck 
30.  Ludovico Ariosto
31.  Nikolai Gogol
32.  Murasaki Shikibu
33.  Arthur Conan Doyle
34.  Louisa May Alcott
35.  George Orwell
36.  Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle/Steven Barnes
37.  Jim Kjelgaard
38.  Jean Raspail

39.  Eliezer Yudkowsky

 
Light Novel Writers: (From a value added perspective, ie, above and beyond any possible adaption it may have received.)

1.  Tsukasa (Juuou Mujin no Fafnir books 4-15, EX)

2.  Reki Kawahara (SAO Progressive 2-3, 5-8, SAO 19-27)

3.  Kazuma Kamachi (Index NT books 1-22 Reverse, GT books 1-11, Railgun SS 1-3, Index: Railgun)

4.  Ao Jumonji (Hai to Gensou no Grimgar books 3-19)
5.  Shoji Gatoh (Full Metal Panic books 6, 10-12, Amagi Brilliant Park books 3-8)
6.  Tsukasa Fushimi (Oreimo books 10-11, Eromanga Sensei books 4-12)

7.  Yomi Hirasaka (Haganai books 9-11, Imouto Sae Ireba Ii books 4-14)

8.  Hiro Ainana (Death March web novels 6-18)

9.  Keiichi Sigsawa (SAOAGGO 6-13)

10.  Shirow Shiratori (Ryuuou no Oshigoto! books 6-17)

11.  Ichiro Sakaki (Outbreak Company books 5-19)

12.  Nisio Isin (Monogatari series books 19-20, 22, 24-29)

13.  Nagaru Tanigawa (Haruhi Suzumiya books 7-12, plus some short stories from books 5 and 6)
14.  Oyuki Konno (Maria-sama ga Miteru books 28-33)
15.  Ishio Yamagata (Rokka no Yuusha books 2-6)

16.  Matsu Tomohiro (PapaKiki books 2-3)

17.  Isuna Hasekura (Spice and Wolf books 6-24, Parchment and Wolf books 1-9)

18.  Hiroyuki Morioka (Seikai no Senki books 4-6)

19.  Yuu Kamiya (No Game No Life books 4-5, 7-12, Practical War Game)

20.  Riku Misora (Choyoyu books 8-10)

21.  Natsume Akatsuki (Konosuba books 8-17)

22.  Tsuyoshi Fujitaka (Sokushi Cheat books 5-14)

23.  Narita Ryohgo (Baccano! books 5-13, 15-22, Bleach: Can't Fear Your Own World 1-3)
24.  Fuyumi Ono (12 Kingdoms books 5-9)

25.  Kenji Inoue (Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu books 8-12.5)
26.  Yuji Yuji (Oreshura books 5-7, 6.5)

27.  Satoshi Wagahara (Hataraku Maou-sama books 11-21, 0, 5.5 plus short stories)

Non-Fiction: (From a value added perspective, ie, above and beyond any possible adaption it may have received.)

1.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2.  Plutarch
3.  Plato
4.  Edward Gibbon
5.  David Hume
6.  Charles Murray
7.  Thomas Paine
8.  Aeschylus/Euripides/Sophocles/Aristophanes
9.  Bertrand Russel
10.  Friedrich Nietzsche
11.  Aristotle
12.  Homer
13.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau
14.  James Boswell/Samuel Johnson
15.  Blaise Pascal
16.  Lucretius
17.  Thucydides
18.  Tacitus
19.  Ann Coulter
20.  Jeff Shaara
21.  Charles Darwin
22.  Karl Marx
23.  Craig Winn
24.  Thomas Malthus
25.  Voltaire
26.  Adam Smith
27.  Herodotus
28.  Xenophon
29.  John Philippe Rushton
30.  Thomas Jefferson
31.  Baruch Spinoza
32.  Sun Tzu
33.  Immanuel Kant
34.  Luo Guanzhong

I based my rankings on A) how much time and attention I've given these authors because they were so absorbing, and B) how much did I learn from and take away from these authors, how much did they change my life.  Beyond these two factors I can't really imagine how else an author should be judged, so I'll leave it at that.  Some authors excelled in one field, and others excelled in the other, but usually both excelled at both.  These are the best of the best after all.

I encourage everyone to read all of these authors early on in their lives when it's still useful and you can apply it to your philosophy.  This would be a good list of authors to read for home schooling, instead of learning useless crap like trigonometry.  If you read all these authors by age 18, you'd have a far superior education to anything any college is offering -- not that you'll receive any college credit or a high paying job for it though.  But it just might be useful when you decide what to do with yourself or who to be with, which is a lot more important than how much money you make anyway.