I've read all the way through up to Dances With Dragons. Tried to get into Dances With Dragons and mostly completely failed. Maybe part of it was the wait between books; I lose interest and accurate recall when enough time and other distractions (like in this instance other books) get between me and a given thing. By the time DWD came out I was no longer attached to most of the series. Maybe it was time, maybe it was my completely self-confessed bitter bitch coming through: I must admit here that when something I like, but do not love, becomes the obsession of a large, loud group of people, it generally tends to turn me off of the object of their fandom. Everyone running around going "OMG Game of Thrones" made me go "Yes. Please shut up. GoT." I guess part of it is that while I enjoyed GoT a lot at first, I never fell in love and found such passion alienating. (What wasn't I seeing in the series that everyone else saw?)

I wouldn't say hasty. I would say "more dramatic" and/or "more painful." We become inured to shock when we are frequently exposed to it. Let's say [x] amount of shock like the death of a single character. If [x] occurs every 50-100 pages by 1,000 pages in [x] is expected. Now to get the same reaction the author must deal out 2[x] of shock. Or whatever. You build a tolerance for it, especially as a reader because readers are already detached from the "reality" of the world within a book. (Edit: OK, yes, basically I'm saying that emotional reactions from book characters and events are like heroin. At first you're super sensitive to the characters and their pain. But if they're in pain fucking all the time you're just like "oh yeah, you're suffering again. fuckin' frodo and your fuckin' ring whining about it i get it." Then Frodo has to lose his fucking FINGER before I'm like "Oh yeah he's suffering some more, that really, really sucks." Or, whatever.)

I watched the first season. I got tired of all the people going "OMG" on Facebook and Twitter. Like, a) contain yourselves, people, and b) you think the HBO series was good? go read the fuckin' book, and c) you fucking newbs that are just getting into this through the HBO series and think you're "fans," you don't even fuckin' know.

Like, sure, TV series are cool. I never got into Got:TV. I'm not up-to-date and don't care to get that way. I understand TV/movie adaptations of novels are not their novels and maybe should be treated as separate objects because of it, but based on some of the changes they've made in the series I'm not really interested. And I certainly don't care about becoming emotionally invested in GoT:TV. Like, I clearly can't bestir myself to be emotionally invested in the books at this point. Why even bother with the show?

I skimmed DwD to read the stories of the characters I liked and/or despised. DwD is when I got really fed up with GRRM.

I guess my point is it's all plot and so I feel like I can just read the summary later and not lose anything at all. Just give me the freaking tl;dr so I don't have to slog through the books but I get some kind of resolution to the story if I want it.

I really, really dislike GoT, but it's not because I haven't gone in as deep as I could try. - to the books.