What's up with Jane Austen?

I don't mean I expect y'all to start channeling her or anything ("Yo, Jane, play any grab-ass lately?") I just mean I'm bewildered. The recent craze over her fiction--and, to a lesser extent, the Brontes', probably because their work was darker--has been going on for years, with no sign of letting up.

I had to read a number of Austen's novels when I was in college and, to be honest, they hardly left me all aflutter. In fact, they left me pretty cold. Am I not a romance reader at heart? Or a c...