Amy's Reviews > The Story of My Life

I. just. can't.

I suppose it's a matter of taste, but I hated this book. I didn't expect the life of a deaf and blind girl in the late 19th and early 20th century to be very exciting, but I had hoped for more...I don't know...emotion...substance...story...

There are some nice moments in this book and Helen Keller's life is inspiring, but for the most part this book is mind numbing.

***** SPOILER ALERT*****

This is what happened to Helen Keller:

She had a horrible illness at nineteen months old which caused the loss of her hearing and sight.
She was taught to read, write, and (almost) speak by Anne Sullivan.
She grew up.
She learned a lot of different languages.
She went to collage and graduated (inspiring!)
She read a lot of books.
She wrote a lot of books.
She met a lot of famous people.
She died.

Maybe I was just ready to be done with this book, but the last three chapters just dragged on. Chapter 21 is all about her "book friends", meaning the books that she read and what authors she liked...but then she turns kind of douchey and is all "I also read Heidi in German!" I think that this is where the book turned for me, because in Chapter 22 she talks about her all of her different "tree friends" (she literally describes trees!) and her "dog friends" and then for the rest of the book she starts name-dropping like a mo-fo! Maybe the old-timey folks got off on that sort of thing, but I don't.

And then there was this:

"I also dislike people who try to talk down to my understanding. They are like people who when walking with you try to shorten their steps to suit yours; the hypocrisy in both cases is equally exasperating."

I just hate it when people are courteous, don't you?

Still, the book did yield one quote that I liked a lot describing her struggle with college:

"I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better. I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Each struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire."