After reading "Falling Upward" I came across a review of this work and thought it would be an interesting read. It is, but more than a coherent memoir, which the review led me to believe, it is a set of short biographies of diverse people, some famous, some not. Holmes takes the "reflections" on these lives seriously and occasionally speculates on his subjects. ( )

This was marvelous, but, as always when I "read with my ears" (a perfect expression I stole from a friend!), I'm finding it hard to express Why I loved it.
Holmes really captured me at the fourth essay/chapter, which is on memory (and, appropriately, titled "Forgetting"), but the earlier pieces, on various aspects of his work as a biographer -- "Travelling," "Experimenting," "Teaching" -- were already quite engaging. He really helped me appreciate the art of biography writing, and the later chapters, in which he offers "mini biographies" of Romantic era figures and illustrates how various biographers have shaped our understanding of them, delightfully illustrate the points he makes in the early ones.
He profiles five Romantic era women and five men: Margaret Cavendish, Zelide, Madame de Stael, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Somerville, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Lawrence, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Blake. My interest flagged a bit during the chapters on Zelide and Madame de Stael, but otherwise I found them all fascinating. While I was quite familiar with several of the figures going in, Holmes's deep knowledge of this period, combined with his knack for the well chosen story, held my interest even for the often told stories of Shelley's drowning and Keats's tubercular demise. His focus, on how these lives have been handled by biographers, as well as on the efforts, motivations, and trials of the biographers themselves, provides an intriguing and unusual perspective. A delightful book, and one which should add another level of appreciation to my reading of biographies in the future! ( )