Wow, I own 90% of the books mentioned, and they’re a small fraction of my collection.
Sword of Truth series is a good idea if you liked Wheel of Time, the authors have a very similar writing style.
David Eddings’ Belgariad series is good, if a little light as fiction goes.
If you want more of a middle ground, Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books are very good, and the first Valdemar series is the aforementioned Gryphon Trilogy; Black Gryphon, White Gryphon, Silver Gryphon. From there, theres about 50 other books that all take place over a period of thousands of years within the same world.
Ender’s Game is indeed a very awesome book, even if you don’t like the genre. Its sequels are also very noteworthy (there’re 3 more: Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind), although I’ve never read the Shadow series (Shadow of the Hegemon and such). They follow one of the other kids in Ender’s ordeals.
You should also read The Dark Tower series (7 in all) by Stephen King. They’re nothing like his other works, in the fact it’s more of a fantasy feel than horror. If you’ve read a lot of his other works, then you’ll find a lot of allusions to other works of his.
Rabelais’s a good choice, but I don’t think he’s looking to learn more from 16th century french philosophy, otherwise, he’d have read Montaigne’s Essays.