In the introduction to this second volume of her blog writings, Mary Beard asserts that writing a blog is "rather like going to the gym: easy to start… harder to stick at when the novelty wears off". Beard, however, has been keeping up "A Don's Life" for six years and has attracted a band of followers who, she points out, are a "different breed" from the usual run of "abusive, uninteresting and often deeply sexist" online commenters. (Her opinion presumably wasn't improved by the recent cascade of Twitter vitriol over her appearance, following AA Gill's suggestion that she was "too ugly for television".) Beard's posts tend to be short ruminations on aspects of the academic life, prompted by her job as professor of classics at Cambridge University. She writes engagingly and illuminatingly on subjects, ranging from the drudgery of academic bureaucracy, the media's distorted coverage of universities, and why bad teachers aren't always a bad thing. Some entries risk being tedious in their specificity:one is an anecdote about turning up five minutes late to invigilate an exam. Mostly, though, Beard's blogs are a winning blend of seriousness and chattiness. This book is a lovely thing to dip into, even if it doesn't actually offer anything you can't already access online for free.