This thread is now an A Dance With Dragons Spoiler thread.

[Cain]

That too, though I had wondered before A Dance With Dragons whether Mesliandre was in fact a priestess of the Red God.  Her own chapters confirmed it, but it was nice to see that Thoros also did the same.

They did, though I don't know about it being related to the Doom.  From the sound of it, the Doom might have been a natural disaster, some dragon-fuelled national meltdown, blood magic gone horribly wrong or some mix of all three (betting on it now: insane experiments involving getting dragons to have the explosive power of volcanos).

It also occured to me this episode how clever the wall is.  It becomes more powerful the deeper winter is.  And we know the Others are somehow linked to extremely cold weather.  So the wall becomes stronger as the threat goes larger.  It is, in fact, antifragile.

[Junkenstein]

My best bet for the doom is an assassination after the cult had spread with said disaster being an intended (or unintended) consequence. High ranking figure controlling ancient powers set loose kind of thing.

There were a couple of references to huge fuck off ice spiders and other giant nameless shit attacking the wall in times of old. I'm guessing at least 50% of the "legends" are going to turn out to be actually real and you really do need a wall this big. And it's still not enough.

It's also surprising that the TV show is one of the few I'd recommend in favour of the book. Rare. I've given up on the next book coming before the show catches up.

[Eater of Clowns]

I've heard actually quite a few people say they prefer the show, though most of them saw the show first and picked up the books later.

My favorite parts of the books, though, is the depth.  You get a feel for the depth of the rivalries when you learn more about how they started.  And then there's the characters who only show up in the books, like my personal favorite, Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.