It was elbows-out at school last week as we mums hit the second hand textbook sale in the administration office.
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This was followed by frantic messaging of all friends and relations to track down the books on our lists that we'd missed.
I suspect I was a mite more excited than most with my purchases, as I had my eye on one of my eldest daughter's Year 12 History texts; Liberating France.
My eldest daughter is historically miffed if I attempt to read her books before she has had the chance, so I have been forced to make this a covert operation, reading late at night, early in the morning, carving out some time when she's at school
Why my sudden interest in the France of 250 years ago?
That's easy.
I'm reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo at the moment and I'm all at sea about my Bourbons and my Buonapartes, and with the author waxing lyrical about the battle of Waterloo, I knew I needed to check additional sources.
My eldest daughter is historically miffed if I attempt to read her books before she has had the chance, so I have been forced to make this a covert operation, reading late at night, early in the morning, carving out some time when she's at school or slipping the book out from under the car seat while she's in her singing or piano lesson.
Every so often I pop her book back on her desk so she can spot it and imagine it has been there the whole time.
I expect my luck will run out soon and all the revolutionary trigger points I'm reading about will play out in my life, although there may not be rioting,
I have pencilled in being taxed heavily for the privilege I have used my title to claim. By then I hope to have all the main players and motives mapped out in my mind so I can return to Les Miserables enlightened.
I love my history, but the textbook approach just fell into my lap recently after my constitutional curiosity about early North America was piqued by the musical Hamilton and I found a textbook at our Chaplaincy Book Fair for a dollar that filled in all the gaps.
Where on earth am I headed after North America and France you ask? Why Russia of course.
I think it's finally time to give War and Peace a quick read.
How fortunate for me I know exactly where to find a copy of Reinventing Russia.