Brandon Sanderson has put a name to the book that sits at the top of his list. During a 2025 lecture in his Brigham Young University sci-fi and fantasy creative writing course, the celebrated author said, “In fact, Dune is probably my favorite book of all time.”
He made the remark around the 8:08 mark of “Promise, Progress, Payoff - Plot Theory: Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lecture #2,” one of the lectures from his classroom that are recorded and uploaded to YouTube. In the same talk, Sanderson said Dune is basically Hamlet, just as The Lion King is, arguing that the three stories share the same core shape: a wronged son, a dead father, a usurping uncle, a stronger return and the killing of the uncle.
That matters because Sanderson is not speaking as a casual fan. He is a celebrated sci-fi and fantasy author who often uses his lectures to break down storytelling craft and to talk about other works that shaped his own thinking. Dune is also a legendary sci-fi saga that has inspired multiple blockbuster adaptations, which makes his favorite-book choice a nod to one of the genre’s most durable touchstones.
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The interesting friction is that Sanderson was not just praising Dune; he was folding it into a larger theory of plot. By putting it beside Hamlet and The Lion King, he was making the case that enduring stories often survive because their emotional architecture is simple, familiar and repeatable even when the setting changes. For viewers following his lectures, the reveal was less a stray opinion than a window into how he reads stories as a writer.
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Sanderson’s answer is clear enough: when asked, through his lecture, what book stands above the rest, he pointed to Dune. And in his telling, its place at the top comes not only from affection but from the same structural force that has kept Hamlet alive for centuries and turned The Lion King into a modern classic.
