Growing up in a time of "literary scarcity" (when we had to pay for our books, magazines and newspapers) all those densely packed paragraphs seemed so much more valuable, didn't they? Not only that, typing short paragraphs with tons of white space around them, I could just hear my grandmother growling at me, "Why are you wasting so much paper?"
I keep having to remind myself that screen-space is limitless, and words spread out are so much easier to read.
Plus, I'm with you on simple character descriptions. Who really remembers all that description anyway? It's always funny to get towards the end of a book and say, "Wait, Ygritte was a redhead?"