I've been reading Rhythm of War (fourth book in the Stormlight Archive) and mostly so far my reaction is wow I wish I had re-read the previous three books at some point. I have totally forgotten about half the characters, the ones I remember I still couldn't tell you how their relationships with each other ended, and there's a dozen plot points I couldn't tell you how they were resolved. Some of it is coming back to me as I read but I think at some point once I'm done I should do a whole-series re-read to out, like, everything in context. Sanderson generally is an author who rewards playing close attention to detail and noticing things that don't make sense as clues to larger mysteries and I can't really do that if I'm forgetting half the hints to what should and should not make sense.

Probably part of the problem is that I don't really participate in the Cosmere fandom, which would serve for the purpose of regularly refreshing that stuff in my mind and talking about things other people have noticed that I might not have (well, I've been in an rpg campaign set in the Cosmere for a while, but not beyond that). And some of *that* is that I don't really know how to... do that? The only two fandoms I "participate in" in the relevant sense are Worm (where it mostly works out as "read a lot of fanfic and have many tumblr mutuals who are into it because that's how the social circles worked out") and ASoIaF (where I mostly just read analysis blogs).

Purposeful human interaction continues to be hard, I guess.