Conflicted about a winter that just won’t come

On Monday, America the Beautiful celebrated her 240th birthday, but in just a few more days, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels will pass a milestone that’s going to miff some of its fans.

Tuesday marks five years since the publication of “Dances With Dragons,” the fifth and — astoundingly — most recent novel in Martin’s novel series, which serves as the source material for HBO’s much-celebrated “Game of Thrones” TV show.

Tellingly, on April 17, the “Game of Thrones” TV show also turned 5. Over the course of six seasons, it indisputably has become a pop-culture titan with average per-episode live viewership of more than 7.5 million and a trophy case stocked with more than two dozen Primetime Emmys, not to mention a Peabody Award.

It has made A-list celebrities of actors like Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister) and Kit Harington (Jon Snow). Because of “Game of Thrones,” people on the street who would confuse Merlin for a bearded hobo now chuckle whenever someone says “Hodor” and nod knowingly when someone intones, “Winter is coming.”

But to be honest, I find myself resenting the show’s success. In five years, it has caught up to and, as of the most recent season, moved beyond the plot of the books, the first of which — “A Game of Thrones” — turns 20 years old in August.

I definitely intend to watch the TV show, which looks amazing, but I’ve intentionally avoided it thus far in a, probably futile, attempt to preserve my mental image of the characters and settings. When the book series is done, I’ve been reasoning, I plan to binge-watch the show and appreciate it on its own terms. Knowing “Game of Thrones” is now in unexplored territory, plotwise, is putting that commitment to the test, however, as spoilers keep cropping up in my social-media feeds.

Perhaps I should just abandon my soapbox and watch along with everyone else, but I’m determined to see this story through on the medium I started it on almost a decade ago. I didn’t do that with “Harry Potter,” and part of me regrets not experiencing the novels by themselves before letting the movies establish a mental benchmark for Hogwarts and its residents.

Some of you undoubtedly are fans of “Game of Thrones” or Martin’s novels. Perhaps of both. I’d love to get your take. Does it bother you that the TV show has progressed so rapidly while the books have stagnated? Am I just tilting at windmills? Shoot me an email, and we’ll talk it out.