I've read the first three books but got tired of waiting sooo long between books that I occupied myself with other crap and haven't read book 4 or 5. Now that I'm paying attention again I get to read two books back to back 
Which is good because if I remember correctly he meant to write that as one book but cut it into two because it got so big so yea for me. I watched the first like 5 episodes and it is pretty sweet so far and some of the actor choices were pretty awesome like the dwarf and joffrey, but some were were crap choices like the guy playing jon snow was a terrible god awful choice.
I dunno, I thought it was perfect casting. Jon Snow is appropriately EMO and EMO RAGES when he should. He's a generally disagreeable person, really. 'Boo hoo, I'm a bastard. Oh wah, I joined the Night's Watch and it's not as fun as I stupidly thought. Boo hoo, Ygritte. Boo hoo, no one likes me. Wah.' Seriously, by book 3 I was just tired of reading his chapters, it felt like reading Jon Snow's Blog. :p
