Books wonderful books...and cheap as chips...free in fact!

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It is now day mutter mutter mumble of the 30 x 30 minutes of the family history challenge created by Janine Adams, I confess to not doing any yesterday, but believe me, I have done more than 30 minutes on other days, so I'm not too worried about it.


Check out this stack of books I borrowed from the State Library of Queensland.  Yes, you heard correctly - borrowed.  Who knew you could borrow books from SLQ?  Not this little black duck.  I knew you could do Interlibrary Loans or whatever they're called, but borrowing directly from the library... well, how fabulous is that?  Of course, there are some requirements that you can check out here.

As I've mentioned in recent blog posts, I am currently undertaking a short course with Pharos Tutors, titled 'Education and Childhood 1820-1920'. 

I was also lucky enough to be able to borrow this book from my local city council library...



So many books to read...so little time.



This looks like a particularly interesting book.  There are lots of beautiful pictures/illustrations, which I always love.



This one was recommended reading by the course tutor.



I found this one on the shelf and it has very useful chapters in it particularly with regard to our own unique cultural perspective in Australia, namely educating the indigenous population. This aspect is for obvious reasons not covered in the Pharos course which is UK based.  



This book will be largely irrelevant for my family history research - my lot being agricultural labourers by and large but it will provide context from a class/economic perspective



This book probably has nothing to do with childhood and education but looked very intersitng.  Having said that, I was conscious of a certain nobless oblige philosophy in some of the schools I went to or considered going to in my senior years where you were expected to do charity work or live a good life.  What constitutes a good life for you? Or a good enough life?  What do you think your purpose in life is? What would you be proud of on your headstone?

What have you been reading lately, family-history-wise? 

What could you achieve by spending just 30 minutes every day on family history?

Wanna join me in the challenge?

In other boring news, we've had to get a new modem at home as ours was zapped by lightning in a recent storm. Eighteen days with intermittent to no internet...enough to make a family historian cry.  

Oh, and I had to get a fridge mechanic in today to "fix" my fridge.  The lights weren't working. It turns out I had a magnet on the top of the fridge, which was interfering with the door sensor.  I'm telling you this for free. Thank me. It cost me $200 in a call-out fee for a problem easily fixed (and indeed fixed by me, madly cleaning the top of the fridge two minutes before the mechanic came so he wouldn't see all the crap we put on top of the fridge - including magnets and dust). Note to self,do not put magnets on a fridge in case they interfere with sensors.  

Last but not least, I booked an electrician on Monday to fix a ceiling fan.  He couldn't do it until we "upgraded" our electrical switchbox. $4k later.  Sigh.  Our house is just at that age, unfortunately. It was ten years old when we bought it the day my son was born, and now he is 33, so the house is 43 years old, and it needs maintenance. Lots of maintenance.  

All the tradies were lovely and charming and patient with frazzled old me.  The electrician spent a good five hours upgrading the meter box, so now I think I can get a smart meter and see where all my power is being used.... air conditioners in summer, I suspect. 

Onwards and upwards.


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