It's a Don's Life -- Mary Beard

Mary Beard is a professor of classics at Newham College, Cambridge, and she has a blog. Where she finds time to maintain it, I have no idea, since she's a very busy woman, considering all her academic responsibilities, not to mention that she's the classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement and does a lot of travel for research. The blog is full of interesting things related to the classics but also to modern life. So interesting, in fact that about three years worth of blog entries have been published in book for in It's a Don's Life.

Since I hadn't been keeping up with the blog, everything in the book was new to me, and it's all highly entertaining. It's the perfect book to have around when you want to read something short and interesting. A few examples: Was there a St. Valentine? What made the Romans laugh? (This entry includes jokes, of course.) Ten things you thought you know about the Romans, but didn't. And so on. Beard also includes some of the comments left on the blog.

As soon as you read the book, you'll most likely want to follow the blog. Check them both out.