title: parse reStructuredText README.rst to get description section
body: <p>I seek to reuse information from my README.rst in package description of the setup.py</p>
  
  <p>In my setup.py I have a readme function:</p>
  
  <pre><code>def readme():
      try:
          with open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'README.rst')) as f:
              return f.read()
      except (IOError, OSError):
          return ''
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which I call in</p>
  
  <pre><code>setup(
      ...
      long_description=readme(),
      ...
  )
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Because my <a href="http://docs.python.org/devguide/documenting.html" rel="nofollow">reStructuredText</a> is a rather huge <a href="https://raw.github.com/ewiger/mlab/master/README.rst" rel="nofollow">README.rst</a> it might be a better way just to read only a particular section of restructured text.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a smart way to rewrite <code>readme()</code> so that it parses README.rst and ignores the rest of reStructuredText formatting, i.e. gives only plain text of a small subsection?</p>