I'm definitely in agreement with the 2nd two points there.
I try not to be like that with the books, if you wait years in anticipation then the book is always likely to be an anticlimax, that was pretty famously thought of the Robery Jordan wheel of time books but a mate of mine read them later than me and liked all the so-called 'tedious' ones as he hadn't had to wait only to find not as much happened as hoped.
But yeah, they are getting right up on the books now. With some sub-plots (Daenaerys and Tyrion for example) we're almost there already.