Love: two choices

If you had two choices, would you rather:

1. A passionate, all consuming love like Heathcliff's; dramatic, with times of sweetness, times of bitterness and haunting pain.

OR

2. A selfless, good and constant love, like that of Mr Linton.

Wuthering Heights was one of those books that would sit on my bookshelf for years. I would attempt to read it from time to time, but never made it past the first page. But actually, it was a fascinating and engrossing story. Classics are classics for a reason.

On a side note, why are novels considered academic, and a more wholesome form of entertainment than say, movies and magazines? In the days before television, were these books, full of scandals and drama, not equivalent to today's soap operas?