Hm...guess that just goes to show opinions differ. I LOVED Persuasion (the book), but I really didn't like the movie at all. I felt like it assumed that you'd read the book, so it didn't explain a lot of the back story, but then it changed so MUCH of the book that I would have liked it better if I saw the movie first. And I didn't like the people in it. They didn't match their characters in the book at ALL, with the possible exceptions of Charles Musgrove (?) and Wentworth's friend...what was his name? Began with an "h".
One thing to keep in mind with reagards to Jane Austen's books is that the older ones tend to be more difficult to read. The language is more confusing and the characters aren't as richly developed. Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion are probably my favorites.
OK, I'll give them another try, especially 'Persuasion'. Which adaptation did you see, by the way? I went looking for it on video or DVD today, and the only one I saw was from 1995 or so, and it starred Colin Redgrave as Wentworth, I guess. The one I saw seemed to explain the story pretty well, but it may have been one of those Masterpiece Theatre things that had several parts. It starred Ciaran Hinds, who also played Rochester in the most recent version of 'Jane Eyre'. And if you saw 'Sum of All Fears' last year, he played the Russian President.