I Have, At Length, Lost What Little Remains of my Sanity

Why, oh why, Philogelos, I hear you cry, do you think that? What could possibly make you any more batty than you already are? How could you downscale the charts of insanity any more than you have already? What makes you think you have any sanity left to lose?
The answer to all these questions (bar the last one) is the resolution I have made for myself: I am going to read Robert Jordan's 'Wheel of Time'.
All twenty-one bricks of it.
With prequels.
And background.
It doesn't matter, though, because it annoys Gundrea, and that is reason enough for me. At the time of speaking, I have devoted a week of my life to chewing through the prequel, 'New Spring', and the first three volumes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Jordan.jpg
This guy is Robert Jordan. He did lots of mad stuff but, most importantly, he wrote the Wheel of Time (or the first twelve volumes, anyway). He said in the little thing they have in the back of the book that he 'intends to keep writing until they nail his coffin shut'.
He did, God love him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BrandonSandersonX.png
And this smarmy git is Branderson Sandon, or whatever his name is. I have not yet had the opportunity to peruse his additions to the seemingly unkillable Wheel of Time, so I look forward to Book Thirteen. Will he live up to expectations, or will he flounder and fail with the 'unlucky thirteen'? Find out my opinion some time in the distant future, if by some miracle I stick to this insane resolution.
Now we have the background out of the way, I intend to cast an eye on the first book in the series: 'The Eye of the World'. No professional book critic am I - far from it - and my opinion is further biased by the special place 'The Eye of the World' holds in the dusty, ill-maintained attic that serves me as a heart. I can, in fact, remember the very day when my mother presented it to me...
I read this repeatedly as a child, and no wonder. Jordan, a history buff, crafted the history of his world magnificently, a failing I noticed in (say) Moorcock's 'Elric'. He also took a leap into the abyss by completely excluding any traditional fantasy races - the only recognisable element being the dragon, and even that is just a picture on paper. His characters are good - not Shakespearean by any stretch of the imagination, but very good (I keep forgetting whose eyes I'm reading through, particularly later in the series, but that's just 'cause of the vast profusity of characters). The plot (I'm sure you all know it off by heart by now) is good enough - not exactly a page-turner, and not heavy on twists, certainly not this early in the colossal saga, but I was never bored. As ever, Mr. Jordan's strength is his fantastic background and his equally brilliant evocation of it - he keeps pulling stories, festivals, artefacts, monsters, and factoids out of a profusity of sleeves. I could see every inch of the Ways, see the walls of Caemlyn, so on and so forth. I enjoyed reading it as much this time as I did the time before, and the time before that, and the time before that...
Next: 'The Great Hunt'. In the meantime, the Great Hunt for the 'Great Hunt', as I seem to have misplaced both my copies. Oh dear.