I hate heavy books.
They're heavy. They make it harder to hold them up to read so I don't get a crick in my neck.
Around the time the LotR movies were out, I got LotR as a big book and Neil Stephensen's Cryptonomicon for x-mas.
Both were thick and heavy, both had about the same page count (1K).
Normally, I read about 60 pages an hour (I timed myself while finishing book5 of Harry Potter in a car going 1500 milees to Minnesota).
LotR took 6 months. It was that ponderous to read. And I'd read it before. And seen the movies recently.
Once finished, I finally got to crack Cryptonomicon. 2 weeks later I was done. A world of difference.
I'd just seen HBO's Game of Thrones. I liked it. Then my wife got me the book. It's very heavy. The reading is slow going, with my workload letting me only read in small chunks.
Overall, I like the book. Personally, I like most of the Starks better than the other characters. So I guess they're not all bad. But I suppose it is a grim tale.
One series I like reading is Dresden Files (Ghost Story is on the stack, right after GoT). One thing that bugs me about the series is how Butcher's big climax is solved by the before fight sentence "Harry took care of a couple errands to prepare for the big fight" Which in the middle of the fight, when things look gloomiest, gets revealed as "Before the fight Harry had called a bunch of friends to meet him at the fight and brought his RPG which he hid in his back pocket."
It seems that information hiding is how Jim keeps suspense up. Where despite the fact that we are in first person real time reader mode including trips to the bathroom, the moment it will ruin the big surprise solution, details get left out so he can surprise us later.