It's a little amazing that it was never assigned reading in any of the endless number of literature courses I took in high school and college, and I haven't ever picked one of her books up on my own. My level of knowledge is so low that even though my ex-girlfriend loved them and had me watch one of the movie adaptations with her, I don't even remember which one it was. I might have been a little distracted.

So not only do I not have a favourite Austen novel, I couldn't even tell you offhand what any of them are about. Whenever I think of Austen, I think of Jane Eyre, even though that's an entirely different author — but that's the one I have read, and I think of them together for some reason. When you mention what the obvious favourite adaptation is, I don't even know which one you mean. Maybe it was the one I saw, or maybe not; who can know these things?

Regarding the phase of adding monsters to Austen novels (I know about the zombies and the sea monsters), I think it's a lazy use of public domain property. It's attention-grabbing, sure, and it sounds like fun, but splicing new story into the old, existing text? Lame. If you want an Austen book with zombies, rewrite the whole thing so that it has zombies while coherently maintaining the existing style, themes, and characters, dammit.

It is ridiculously hot in western Canada today.