EUOL is definitely near the top of my list of favorite authors along with Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game, enuf said), David Eddings, Ben Bova, Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land [the unabridged version, naturally] is one of my favorite books of all time), Tolkien (The Hobbit is the 1st "High/epic fantasy I read over 20 years ago when I was 10 or so, and as such will always hold a special place in my heart), R.A. Salvatore, Dean Koontz, Poe (probably my favorite all around author, from poetry to short stories, fantastic), Neil Gaiman (if you haven't read Everwhere you are missing out), Le Guin (the Earthsea series is fantastic), just to name a few.
You may notice that RJ is missing. Yeah, so, I am one of the few that just couldn't finish reading his books. I thought book 1 was good (enough so that I kept reading) but by the time I got about half way thru Lord of Chaos (book 6), I realized I just didn't care about any of the characters and wasn't interested in what happens next. So I stopped reading. Blasphemy, I know. I own books 1-10 so I may eventually go back and start over again.