Like Roberts you seem to be missing the point. It's not about obsession, it's about enjoying something despite it's flaws.



The point I'm making is that Jordan went very deep into building a world, rather than creating a skeleton of a world and leaving it as "good enough". Poor public education is a whole other topic.




I'm highly aware that the fan-site membership is representative of the fringe readers. However, I think you would be very surprised by the amount of data that can be taken from a sample of online readers who participate in forum discussion. The very fact that Jordan has so many dedicated fan-sites, is an indicator that a larger portion of his readers are more invested than someone like Roberts, who may be a technically better writer, but lacks a passionate fan base. That is a tale in and of itself. And for the record I have had many conversations with casual readers, most of whom can spout off amazing factoids about many WOT subjects. If you've spent 20 years reading a collection of novels you tend to retain quite a bit.



Then why continue to read it? Seems like a waste of energy and time to read something you don't enjoy. I can simply say that perhaps you need to get out of your head and let yourself enjoy the story. The more you bog yourself down with being irritated by poor syntax or literary devices you don't like the less you take away from the enjoyment of a rich storyline. Perhaps try listening to the audio books, I've recently downloaded a few of them (I've never listened to an audio book before mind you) and have found a rather different experience... some good, some not.



Generally speaking I find other Fantasy and most Sci-fi bland and oddly unimaginative. I tend to mostly read non-fiction.

I used to read a lot of Fantasy, and have a few favorites that I still pick up from time to time, but over the years I've gotten board with an increasingly formulaic category of books. Perhaps Jordan is somewhat responsible for that

I think one of the reasons I enjoy Jordan so much is I can see how much effort he put into building each character, each nation etc... I find most other Fantasy authors to be rather lazy in that regard. Perhaps it's my age, when I was in my 20s I enjoyed the adventure aspects of Fantasy and read much more widely in the genre, in my 30s I've gotten more into depth of character and have had little luck in Fantasy, as I'm creep up on my 40s I find that fiction in general holds little appeal to me, I'd rather read a historical text or a research study!