Another late one but never mind! I also adopted the extra data line. Then a pass through the data once to find who wrote "THIS BOOK FIRST" and the rest can be done in a Schwartzian transform. 
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
#
use strict;

our @thingsToSort = (
   {author => 'bart', title => 'skateboarding'},
   {author => 'lisa', title => 'postmodernism'},
   {author => 'marge', title => 'hairstyles'},
   {author => 'lisa', title => 'THIS BOOK FIRST'},
   {author => 'homer', title => 'donuts'},
   {author => 'bart', title => 'coolness'},
   {author => 'lisa', title => 'eating veggies'});

our $firstAuthor = q();
foreach (@thingsToSort)
{
    next unless $_->{title} eq 'THIS BOOK FIRST';
    $firstAuthor = $_->{author};
    last;
}

print
   map {"$_->[0]->{author}: $_->[0]->{title}\n"}
   sort
   {
       $b->[1] <=> $a->[1] ||
       $b->[2] <=> $a->[2] ||
       $a->[0]->{author} cmp $b->[0]->{author} ||
       $a->[0]->{title} cmp $b->[0]->{title}
   }
   map
   {
       [
          $_,
          $_->{title} eq 'THIS BOOK FIRST',
          $_->{author} eq $firstAuthor
       ]
   }
   @thingsToSort;

[download]
I tried to think of a way to accomplish the first pass in the transform to make things simpler but failed.

Cheers,

JohnGG

In reply to Re^2: Twisted sort requirements by johngg
in thread Twisted sort requirements by forrest

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