My criticism with the books is that GRRM tends to go too far down the rabbit hole. He cold cut the books' length in half if he wouldn't waste 12 pages describing the food at each feast or the type of material that clothes are made of and other such minutia. When I see that shit coming up, I just usually skip ahead a page or two and pick up where it ends.
This is true, there is a trick to reading these books. I'll skip paragraphs when I know for damn sure he is doing nothing but describing what every character is wearing or going through the bloodlines of the Starks' 19th cousins once removed but 17th cousins of the Lannisters... Skip that stuff and the books become infinitely more tolerable.