Yeah, that's rough. Most of it only becomes apparent in retrospect. The problem with WoT is that it was so long between books, it was hard to keep it all in your head when the next one came out.

I stopped reading them around book 6 or 7 figuring "You know what? Let's just wait for it to finish and read the whole thing..."

Edit Book 6 - Lord of Chaos, that's where I stopped. 1994. Scored an autographed copy though!

Series would finish 19 years later(!)

Then he died, and Sanderson finished it, and I never went back. Maybe some day!