Look What I Found at the Target Dollar Spot?

I have been struggling to find a good book to read lately.  Maybe my expectations have been set too high after reading the Harry Potter series for the last 2 years (once to myself and then to Ben).  I tried some Nora Roberts novels but have been unhappy with the way she writes and with the similar plots.  She tends to write inside the head of every character and I don't care for that.  I also don't care for the antagonism she puts between the main male and female characters.  Most men are mean and rude and act like they despise the women, yet they grab the women and take kisses and cop feels against the women's wills.  Not for me.


I checked Dannielle Steele's lates book, 44 Charles Street, out of the library earlier this month.  I'd read plenty of her books in my 20s and I thought a novel of hers would be some easy, light reading.  Wrong.  I could not get past the 1st few chapters.  She kept repeating the same character descriptions over and over again.  I understand the need to establish who is whom and how they tick in the beginning, but it was insulting to the reader to continue to repeat it and the story wasn't moving along because of it.  *sigh*  I really wanted something good to read besides homeschooling non-fiction!

Then yesterday, B and I popped into Target quickly to pick up 1 thing - a bottle of carpet cleaner to remove a stain.  We were there for at least 45 minutes.  Their "Dollar Spot" was at the entrance where we went in and I let B browse for a little sumpin-sumpin.  I was looking, too, and low and behold, on the bottom shelf, I found unabridged and annotated novels!

1. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
2. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
3. The Scarlet Letter, A Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
4. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin

The Phantom of the Opera was there, too, but I did not buy that one, just the 4 listed, above.  Each book was $2.50 - awesome!  Although Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet and Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly are two of my favorite movies, I've never read a Jane Austin novel.  Shocking, I know, for a bookie like me.  Sense and Sensibility and The Scarlet Letter (also a book I've never read) are for me.  Around The World In Eighty Days and Black Beauty are for me to read to B.  I'm so excited!  I already started reading Sense and Sensibility this morning; perfect activity for this cozy, rainy day.