1. The Gathering Storm (I'm sorry, Jordan, but this one just really worked for me)

2. The Eye of the World (the book that got me into epic fantasy in the first place)

3. The Shadow Rising (the first expanded massive book in the series, where the characters really spread out far and wide)

4. The Great Hunt (the plot is kind of strange when you think about it, but it was great fun at the time)

5. The Lord of Chaos (the series was starting to get long in the tooth at this point, but I feel it was the last great huzzah before things began a decline into the valley of boring)

6. Towers of Midnight (Sanderson's second entry was not nearly as strong as the first, and had structural issues, but was still good)

7. The Dragon Reborn (I always felt this was sort of a strange novel for the series that didn't quite fit with the others for some reason, whether it was the lack of the main character or continuing the hunt idea from the previous novel or what, but it's still good too)

8. A Crown of Swords (not a great deal happens, but it has some good parts, particlarly Mat versus the gholam, and the story hadn't grown flaccid yet)

9. The Fires of Heaven (this one didn't do a lot for me, for some reason; I'm really not sure why)

10. Winter's Heart (a last stab at a good story before the series fell into disuse, with a good number of things happening at least, but the writing starting to let the series down in my opinion)

11. The Path of Daggers (aka the book where very little happens, but, uh, it had a cool cover)

12. Knife of Dreams (I didn't even read this until right before Gathering Storm was released; it was a slow, painful read and I skipped big chunks, particularly in regards to Elayne ... most of the plots in the story seemed to be going nowhere, and I couldn't connect with any of it anymore)

13. Crossroads of Twilight (the book that broke this camel's back; I bought it on release day in hardcover, paid my $30, dug into it eagerly, and was completely disappointed when it was endlessly boring and nothing of consequence happened. This is why I don't mind Sanderson's timeline bobbles in Towers of Midnight — because it was much preferable in my mind to solutions like this, where the characters lolligag for 700 pages just so everyone's timelines can be in synch)