One of the things I always do in the Christmas vacation is catch up on the year’s music that I’ve missed. Partly it’s a matter of having a little bit more leisure to try out the unfamiliar, that might throw me off my stride or drive me up the wall, rather than sticking to things that I know will relax me or offer a suitable background for lecture prep or marking. Partly, though, it’s because of the End of Year lists – not so much those of the mainstream press, but something like The Spill, for its random eclecticism and the fact that I know that if contributor X likes something then it is at least worth a listen. It’s how the Spotify algorithm ought to work: a selection of people from across the globe with very different tastes, just presenting what they thought was great. Especially this year, when my involvement in composition classes means I’ve been listening to much more jazz and much less of anything else, this is invaluable in giving me a sense of what else is out there. (And I now have some new marking music – strong recommendation for the latest album from Ulrike Haage, not to mention her soundtrack to the recent Berlin 1945 series).)
And that is what I aim to do with this post every year: to offer you all a selection of what I came across that seemed really great and/or thought-provoking and that would be worth your time. It has an added impetus this year, as I have been really feeling the lack of something like it on a more regular basis; that is to say, I’ve had more time for reading but with less ability to concentrate on a proper book, so blog posts are ideal – and so I have often been reduced to scanning the Twitter in the hope of finding mention of something interesting. One hears tell of the glory days of the blogosphere, when everyone would be engaging with and recommending everyone else; I missed all that – and my sense is that there seem to be fewer blogs and fewer posts on them (Crooked Timber has felt very quiet).
The people with a monetisable profile are busy monetising it in proper outlets (and don’t need my advertising), and everyone else is too tired or dispirited? It has felt like this at times – and my own viewing stats have continued their year-on-year decline, albeit a bit less precipitous than in the last few years. Writing about an obsolete subject in an obsolete medium… But I still love the freedom of the shortish impromptu essay or spontaneous thoughts and reactions – this is where one should publish experimental creative musings prompted by reading a book, not trying to pass them off as a proper review – and there are still amazing people out there writing amazing things…
January: Miko Flohr on ‘global Romans’, seeing the classical world through postcolonial eyes, and considering his own relationship with the empire; Venkatesh Rao on the Internet of Beefs; and the first of many excellent Chris Grey posts this year offering ruthless common sense on the idiocies of Brexit.
February: Tegan Burnett on whether academic blogs can be trusted; Charlotte Lydia Riley on academic sexual abuse; Anton Howes on why untold generations failed to invent D&D and what this tells us about process of technological innovation.
March: the ever-amazing Deborah Cameron on gendered colour vocabulary; and the equally reliably brilliant Maria Farrell on The Prodigal Techbro; Keri Facer on thinking about the future in the time of pandemic. And as we go into coronavirus lockdown…
April: Will Pooley on antibiography; Jake Newcomb on Rage Against The Machine as Radical Historians; Helen Lovatt, as part of her new project on The Power of Sadness, on COVID-19 and grief.
May: Charlotte Riley (again, and it’s not just because I’m in her new collection on Free Speecg) on British exceptionalism; Maria Farrell (again) on post-viral fatigue – which was horribly close to the bone, as one reason this month is a bit thin is that by this point I was struggling with the after-effects of the plague…
June: Katherine Blouin on the loss of beloved pets; Gemma Tidman on RhodesMustFall.
July: Sam Kinsley on mental health and performative tweeting in lockdown; Vanessa Stovall’s excellent response to that Joshua Katz article; Mixed Classicist‘s reflections and call for action on what may be an even more dreadful article in The Spectator.
August: Rebecca Kennedy and Maximus Planudes on citation practices; my wonderful collaborators Fast Familiar on their experience of switching things online; Roberta Mazza on the lessons of the ‘Jesus’ wife’ fragment.
September: Catherine Baker on recording Eurovision videos and the lessons for online teaching; Adam Roberts on his pandemic project of translating the Christiad; anonymous game designer on QAnon understood as a game, not least as a key to understanding Thucydides’ appeal; Foluke Ifejola Adebisi on Black Lives Matter.
October: Josephine Grahl on living alone in lockdown; the indispensable Sententiae Antiquae on its ten-year anniversary. Yes, by this point term was starting to get to me, and spare time and energy for reading largely disappeared.
November: Bret Devereaux on military history; Brett Scott on the Flintstones History of Money. Spare time and energy still absent…
December: Michael Shanks on academic voices in classical studies/; Chris Bertram on labour rights and migration, even if this isn’t technically a blog post; Notes from the Apotheke on work-life balance – if only I’d learnt something like this in graduate days…
And finally, if there’s one positive thing that’s come out of Coronavirus, it’s Cora Beth Knowles’ wonderful series Comfort Classics.
Sphinx 
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