There's this huge prejudice that Jordan is primarly a writer for teenagers who is too shallow for adults. But the fact is he has a huge older following (incl. quite a few who were in their thirties when he published EOTW and have followed him since and are now in their fifties) that people just used to his much more visible internet fanbase, much younger, don't know much about because few have time to lose on WOT forums bitching about books they've stopped liking years ago. The few of those we had on Wotmania started to desert when the conversations turned into bashing of COT and endless immature debates on characters.

I'm too young to be part of that fanbase, but I've heard and seen many things about this "older fanbase" over the years, and interacted with quite a few personally. I've known a 70 y.o., an old fashioned southern lady, who loved WOT and told me many others around her did. She loved his humour, called what some refer to as "his slow pace" leisurly and taking the proper time to tell a story.

In general in my personal experience, Jordan's fans who are over 45/50 y.o. are far more patient with his storytelling style, and far more appreciative of the later books in the series. They know his flaws, but still enjoy the books. Very often, it's also people who expect of Jordan a good journey and who didn't obsess with him reaching the finale (we've known for several years how this will end. It's the archetypal good vs. evil story). It's often people who don't like so much most of the contemporary genre fiction and its pacing. They're also not into WOT for its literary qualities (and have near zero interest in debating the literary merits or lack of merits of Jordan) and are perfectly aware this isn't Jane Austen or Salinger... You'd also find quite a few among them who believe WOT is an untimely return to a certain type of quite old fashioned popular literature (and it's after all what Jordan wanted to do, he's cited (or his cousin mentionend to me) many things L'Amour to Dumas and big pop historical sagas as influences behind WOT. Jordan was described to me as an omnivorous reader. He read a lot of great literature, but he was a great lover of pop literature as well. He chose to be a popular writer, by choice and because he was perfectly aware his strengths were his imagination, his ability to tell immersing stories - he's done that socially since he was a kid I was told - and amusing an audience, not in formal work with the language as the "great writers" do) and they appreciate that in Jordan.

I'm approaching 45 (gulp!) and I know many people around me who discriminated massively between 20 and 40, focussing almost exclusively in absorbing great works or following the diktats of the literary critics when choosing contemporary novelists, but who more and more are returning to popular literature as well. Out of pleasure.

And my mom who's doing the exact opposite. She's mixed "serious" reading with pop lit all her adult life (she always loved pop lit. because it relaxed her and because she could read those books anywhere and in any conditions and still enjoy them, whereas the more serious literature she studied once and loves too she thought she was totally losing her time with when she couldn't read in good conditions. She saw no point in plowing through Proust with screaming kids or while rushing to prepare supper, or when she didn't have the mental energy left to read for more than half and hour before sleep, when to appreciate Proust you need to be in the good conditions to get totally immersed in his language). But after she retired, mom stopped reading pop lit and decided from now on she'd revisit writers she's loved and read classic and contemporary novels she didn't have enough "quality reading time" for earlier. It's not that she doesn't love a good thriller or Harry Potter, but she thinks she gets more from great literature and non-fiction nowadays. She reads about 20 pop lit. books per year now, but all of them during what she still calls "the summer vacations". She similarly has stopped going to see blockbusters or to watch TV series - she's decided to devote her the time she reserves for movies frin now on to discover the great directors.

Dad on the other hand had a classical education and kept reading mostly non-fiction and literature during his working life, and nowadays when he reads he reads strictly to relax, so his choices are the worst kind of "fluff". He tried and hated Tolkien. To him it was too much of an in-between, too laborious and not well written enough to be bring him anything the great writers have not done much better, and still too complex to relax, so he stopped a third of the way in and watched the movies instead, as he liked the story.