As some of you may know, I'm not much of a book club person. While I love spontaneous conversations about books, reading something for the purpose of discussing it tends to resurrect shades of the sullen, resentful reader I became in nearly every one of my high school and college Lit classes. Recently, though, I discovered a book that I just may enjoy reading in a book club setting, especially if that book club consists of all, or any, of you.

The book is A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter by William Deresiewicz. Part memoir, part literary criticism, it explores the themes of Austen's novels through the eyes of a man once convinced they had nothing to teach him. Each of Austen's novels has its own chapter, accompanied by the lessons the author learned from it and the ways in which he has applied them in his everyday life.

I'd love to go chapter by chapter, reading along with other Austen fans and discussing whether we agree or disagree with his conclusions and maybe what we, ourselves, take from those stories to apply in our lives. I know everyone is rather busy right now, but would anyone like to read the book with me...perhaps after the holiday season, when a good book and a good discussion should prove excellent accompaniment to the winter weather? I even have a community, book_flakes, created long ago with no real purpose in mind, that we might commit to the purpose. What do you think?