Ok, I just reread Pride and Prejudice, which is in my top 10 of books, period.  I don’t really know what drives the attraction, but sometimes P&P just has to be read, or viewed (and the 5 hr BBC/A&E edition is the one to watch).  This week, I actually did both, which is enabling me to contrast the two, BTW I’m not going to worry about spoilers, so if somehow you don’t know what happens in the book, skip the review…  The major differences I noticed were in pace and focus.  The book starts a lot faster than the movie, and (oddly) even devotes more detail to Darcy’s initial attraction, which IMHO makes it all make more sense.  The secod change is that the miniseries spends a lot more cycles on the younger daughters and the army connection (plus buring lots of screen time on the parties), it really is more of a major plotline on the screen than in the book, though of course hardly trivial.  The oddest difference is near the end, after Jane starts on her trip, which ends so poorly, the book makes it much more evident that she’s changing her mind than the movie.  And the biggest difference is after she observes her letter’s impact on Darcy – on screen we see HIM acting, which reveals the big secret (in the book), and which makes his coming retry more evident, while in the book that is totally missing and instead we hear Jane realize more and more she’s down the wrong path, and thinking it’s all hopeless & regretful.  Sigh, even typing this paragraph pulls me back to the books in a desire to reread.