Game of Thrones/Winter is Coming?

Last month, for our "Mom's Book Club", we read the first book in the Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin and had our meeting this past weekend.  In the book, the Stark family reigns the northern realm and the saying of their family is "winter is coming".  We drank plenty of wine at the meeting but I swear we didn't do any kind of snow dance.  But look at what is happening outside now!  And it's still snowing.
Anyway, the meeting was great.  In this group, we have pretty loose/open discussion but the hostess usually has some printed questions to keep us on track.  I don't have a copy of the questions but will try to remember them.

-- Each family lives in a different climate of the realm - discuss how the place in which they live affects their strengths/habits/personalities/lifestyles.  (here we compared the Starks to Minnesotans - (little did we know what was coming this week!)
-- Each chapter is told from a perspective of a different main character.  Robb Stark is a fairly main character, why doesn't he have any chapters?  What might this foreshadow going forward?  Eddard Stark has chapters but, by the end of this book, we might wonder why (no spoilers!) - again, what might this foreshadow?
-- Were you surprised by the way the book ended?  Did you see any of this coming?  If so, which parts.  If not, why not?  This is definitely the ending of a series book - discuss.
-- If you didn't know anything about the author, would you assume the author were male or female?  Why or why not?
-- Did you like the addition of supernatural/fantasy in the book?  Did you feel differently about the dragons vs the direwolves vs the white walkers?  Why?  Why do you think the author added these elements to the book?  Could the book/story stand without them?
-- Discuss the author's competence in description: could you clearly picture/imagine the settings, the clothing, the food, the weather?  Obviously this is important in making it into a TV series - if you've seen the HBO series, how accurate to what you had in your head was the TV series?  Discuss, in general, the relationship between book and movie/TV.

We always have a potluck dinner at our meetings but we don't always theme it to the book.  This time we did - all centered around a delicious brisket smoked on the grill.  One of the Stark daughters, Sansa, is always stealing lemon cakes from the kitchen in the book so I brought these lemon bars for dessert.  I'd never made them before but this recipe turned out great: