Information: Too Much vs Too Little

Ideally, I'm sure, we all have that perfect amount of information we like in the books we read. For me, I like to see everyone plainly, have a good idea of what the characters look like in my mind, and a pretty clear picture of the location. Just enough that I can see it, but still use my imagination for it. I don't know about anyone else, but I seldom find that amount of description in the books.

So, my question this week is: if you had to choose between getting a lot of information about the area - full description of everything - and not even knowing the color of the character's hair - in other words, very little description of anything - which would you rather have?

For me, I'd actually prefer everything be over-described than barely having any descriptions and information.

I think this comes from all the fantasy books I read. In most of them, it's nearly a requirement that everything be described to death - sometimes quite literally. I will add, I'm not a very proper reader, in that I usually still go with my own ideas and impressions as opposed to what the author says. Which is why I like having a description, of the characters especially, right when they are first introduced.

What do you think?