Reading Group - The Jane Austen Book Club

 If this wasn't our book of the month I would certainly not have picked it up - and I would have been right!  The best thing that I can say about this is that it is short and the pages flick past quite quickly.  The story is less about Jane Austen than it is about the members of the club.  Each chapter is ostensibly about one months meeting and the book that they discuss.  However there is relatively little discussion of Austen's books and the focus is really upon whoever is hosting that month's meeting.

So far I can't say that I really care about any of the characters.  I think that in part that is because despite being halfway through the book I don't feel I really know that much about them.  It feels that there is the merest glimpse at one character in each chapter before he or she becomes peripheral again in the next.

I am also extremely irritated by the shifting viewpoint of the narrator.  Sometimes the story is narrated by a thrid person.  Then at other times the narrator says 'We' when talking about the book club members although it is far from clear which one of them is narrating.

I wonder what the other members of my book group will make of it.

For a change I'm updating this on the day of the book group meeting.  There wer just five of us today, and for the first time more men than women.  Most of the group were generally positive about the book but nobody was really mad keen on it.  There was a general feeling that it was more of a collection of character sketches than a novel as such.  There was also something of a feeling that this was very definitely a women's book.  The one significant male character was thought by most of us to be quite a weak character.  However I tended to disagree.  For me he was the only charcater who voluntarily moved beyond his own comfort zone and therefore I felt that he was a stronger and more confident character than the women.

As usual there was quite a lot of general discussion not related to the book itself.  In particular ther was some talk about how different book groups work and what kind of discussions they have.