I've been burning through these books in the last few weeks, about halfway through book 5 now.
As for the TV series, I watched the first series and was actually a bit disappointed. I liked it, but the way people go on about it, I expected it to be ****ing amazing. But compared to the books I didn't think it was that great. It sometimes felt a bit low budget, like how they'd conveniently skip through the big battles and just show the aftermath, seemed a bit of a cop out to me.
And wtf did they do with Renly Baratheon? In the books I thought he was awesome, in the TV series they made him a complete whiny bi tch, he wasn't anything like how he was written imo.