For all the ghastliness everywhere else, it’s felt like a good year for blogging. Partly this is because I’ve managed to keep up with this blog rather better than in previous years, and have written some things that I’m really rather proud of; increasingly, I’ve come to understand posts (and articles for online publications, of which I’ve also published a few this year) as valid outputs in their own right, rather than as either advertising for or shorter versions of ‘proper’ academic publications, or as a mere distraction from ‘proper’ research (though there have been times this year when blog posts are the only things I’ve felt capable of writing). Even more, however, it’s been the insights and ideas of other people, which I’d never have found or bothered to read without the internet (and, to give credit where it’s due, without the much-maligned Twitter), that have been most informative and inspiring – and this year I’ve remembered, most of the time, to keep a note of the posts that made the biggest impression and are certainly well worth reading if you haven’t yet seen them. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘blogging’
Holiday Reading! Posts of the Year
Posted in Musings, tagged blogging, classical reception, economics, history, internet, political theory on December 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Personally Speaking
Posted in Musings, tagged academic writing, blogging, Keith Hopkins, personal voice, style, Tony Keen on October 11, 2014| 13 Comments »
Given that they possess astonishingly super-sensitive, multi-directional hearing, as detailed in a series of television programmes this week, you might think that the sodding cats would hear that it is pouring with rain this morning, and so go back to sleep for a bit rather than prodding me at 5 am until I get up and open the catflap so that they can poke their noses outside, stomp around angrily for half an hour because it’s raining and I’m refusing to do anything about it, and then go back to bed. I find it more or less impossible to go back to sleep once I’m awake, whatever ghastly hour of the morning it may be, and so I’ve already had two cups of tea, caught up on Twitter, cleaned up the kitchen after yesterday’s brewing session and transferred the experimental Blackcurrant Stout into the fermenting bin before sitting down to contemplate Tony Keen’s fascinating piece yesterday on the personal voice in classical blogging.
Okay, quick readers’ poll: did your reaction to the previous paragraph tend more towards “for goodness’ sake stop wittering and talk about something with a bit of substance” or towards “please tell us more of the home life of a professor of ancient history and his cats”? (more…)
