Heh. They do all involve men and women falling in love and getting married in regency England, so if you're only half paying attention, they could indeed be easily confused for one another.

Nah, I was talking about the Pride and Prejudice mini-series that everyone keeps raving about (not without reason - I own the DVDs and do love it myself), and which is also famous as Colin Firth's big breakthrough. You say you've seen a movie, so can't be that, then; I dare say you weren't so distracted that you couldn't tell the difference between a movie and a mini-series of six one hour episodes.

Comparing Jane Eyre to Austen... hm. Jane Eyre is more modern, one could argue, having been written a good three decades later (iirc), and has at least somewhat more variety in setting. Part of Austen's genius is simply having written six very different and very readable novels which are all set in that small subset of English Regency society, the country gentry / low nobility, and all have plots revolving primarily around female protagonists' search for a husband.

Pride and Prejudice is the most popular of her novels and probably also the best place to start, either that or Emma. If you don't like those, it's safe to say you won't like the rest either.

Yeah. But then they'd have rather less readers, I expect.

I haven't read any of them myself, but I have to say there's one that sounds like it could be good. Vera Nazarian, an author who some people on this board think extremely highly of, has written such a version of Northanger Abbey, and you have to know that Northanger Abbey is largely a satire on gothic literature to begin with, so if you take the satire and then actually do add in monsters, that could be interesting, in the hands of a competent writer.

I understand you're not alone in that. I have to say, I spent one summer in Canada once, albeit the other side (Montreal), and the heat certainly wasn't my favourite aspect of it.