I answered bittersweet, but really it depends on my mood in some ways. I like happy escapism; I reread the books I loved as a fourteen-year-old girl, many of which are the Mercedes Lackey variety of cotton-candy fluff. A bit of a guilty pleasure, but everybody needs a few of those.
But the ones that stay with me -- the ones that ring true, the ones I quote and push at people crying "You must read this!" in allcaps -- those are nearly always the bittersweet ones, the sharp-edged and lyrical works that offer hope and mercy but ask a price for each bit of it. Someplace To Be Flying, Lord of the Rings, The Dark Tower series (although that is bitter-bittersweet, perhaps), the Dark Is Rising series, Diane Duane's books... I like choices and consequences, and loss to make the joy the sweeter.
But books that are unremittingly sad mostly just annoy me. I am an optimist at heart, and there's only so long I can take an emo story before I want to start flicking dried peas at all the characters.
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But the ones that stay with me -- the ones that ring true, the ones I quote and push at people crying "You must read this!" in allcaps -- those are nearly always the bittersweet ones, the sharp-edged and lyrical works that offer hope and mercy but ask a price for each bit of it. Someplace To Be Flying, Lord of the Rings, The Dark Tower series (although that is bitter-bittersweet, perhaps), the Dark Is Rising series, Diane Duane's books... I like choices and consequences, and loss to make the joy the sweeter.
But books that are unremittingly sad mostly just annoy me. I am an optimist at heart, and there's only so long I can take an emo story before I want to start flicking dried peas at all the characters.