Ninety-Nine Stories of God | 
pickThis page is unlike any other page in this book. It is merely an example of a random thought/event in which God may or may not be involved. At first I thought none of it made any sense. As I progressed I was more and more delighted by her thought process. Pointing out situations in which God was equally confused by the game plan, offering tidbits on Kafka, Bonhoeffer, mystics, OJ Simpson‘s jury, it all worked for me. It is one to pick up again.
pickWhat an odd, provocative, unsettling little book. 99 stories, parables really, no more than a few pages long, some not more than a paragraph that grapple and play with what the Divine looks like today, an updated scripture for the 21st century. Choices, moral dilemmas, meaning, saints, sinners, God in action. These concise stories have it all, in ways that do and do not make sense. Williams is playful and adventurous, and writes a mean sentence.
Happy kitty to have us home. (He claimed my new Xmas blanket immediately.) Happy to be home, too. Last night, we got stranded in Wyoming when they closed the highway because of high winds and blowing snow. So that was fun. 😑
But started the tagged book (pulled it off the shelf!) and it's kind of weird and wonderful.
She lived in soiled pajamas, collected rocks and drank staggeringly inventive gin concoctions all day long
pickI absolutely love this collection of stories. I feel like some need to be reread and meditated on. Amazing.
My last reading statistics for this year, it was nice reading month, I can't complain - it was very good reading year, but humans, we are creatures of hope and of course I hope, that next year will be even better. I wish you the same and see you in the next year 😘
pickShort fiction vignettes from an everyday reality. They're not sweet stories about God, they are unusual, strange, intriguing and thought provoking. I didn't understand all of them, but I smiled while I was reading them. Definitely not for everyone, but if you close to the concept of absurdity you'll be impressed.
#seasonsreadings2016 #bestofdecember
pickHmm. And now for something completely different. Kind of like Lucia Berlin on meth. The best part of these story scraps was the fact that she wrote about real people and places. I love that.
#BestBooks2016
Here are as many of my Favorite Books of 2016 I could fit in one Litsy-sized picture. Read them all and then let's start a really amazing book club?
Use the #BestBooks2016 hashtag and tell us all your favorite books of the year.
I have been saving this for when I felt I really needed it. And I think that time is tonight. 📚💗🤘🏻
My Favorite Books of 2016
No. 1: 99 Stories of God by Joy Williams. Call them stories, microfictions, poems—I don't care. I call them Everything I Love.
Thrilled to see NINETY-NINE STORIES OF GOD listed as one of Publishers Weekly's ten Best Books of 2016!
There are certain times where it does not matter if you hear the word yes or the word no in answer to your question, whether you turn left or right, you will reach your destination. Not many but some. --89 Phew
In one of my happy places...doing one of my happy things: reading
Beginning this little gem of a book that was a gift in the latest Powell's Books Indiespensable subscription box.
Just last week I said I wasn't buying more books. And then I bought more books. I need to quit my job for reading purposes.
Litsy wants to know our favorite bookstores. Obviously it's heartbreaking to choose just one and I know I am completely biased, but how could I choose anyone other than King's Books in Tacoma, WA? Two cats, so many books, and they pay me to be there. It's HEAVEN. #getindie
PS. You'll notice Herbert and I have the same taste in books. We both LOVE Joy Williams.
Books I finished* over #biblioweekend! *was almost finished with a couple, including Middlemarch before the weekend. #bibliogiveaway
There's a massive flood in my Litsy timeline for this book. I have to wonder how this book won't be just 'Meh.'
There's a massive flood in my Litsy timeline for this book. I have to wonder how this book won't be just 'Meh.'
There's a massive flood in my Litsy timeline for this book. I have to wonder how this book won't be just 'Meh.'
Has anyone read this yet? I'm trying to decide if I want to buy it. Flipped through it at the bookstore and it looked like an interesting format.
In this week's New Yorker, James Wood celebrated Joy Williams's NINETY-NINE STORIES OF GOD. He praised her "refractory brilliance," calling her fiction "easy to follow but hard to fathom." And he grappled for all to see with the glorious mysteries of her work.
So happy to see Joy Williams getting the admiration and wonder she deserves! Rejoicing in the house of tin!
Any other fans of super short stories? Who are your go-to authors? (On the left is a peek at the endpapers! 🐺😊)
so-soShort one sentence to one-page stories that refer obliquely to God. Mostly mocking and incomplete, the passages often fall flat. One could compare it to On a Winter's Night a Traveler, but not as clever. It also reminds me of the book 420 which was a series of stories set to the character limit of a Facebook post. The stories are very flat and obtuse. There are some stories that shine, but not enough to make up for the ones that do not.
Vignettes of everyday life. Not as religious as the title suggests, which is fine by me.
So now that I have a baby, I'm a little sleep-deprived. This book's short pieces are perfect, like little chocolates, and they're keeping me going.
“Penny found them irritating in any number of ways—they were ostentatious, full of self-regard, and cheap. They also did not read. But she knew herself well enough to know that they irritated her because they had found happiness in a simple place where she had not.” P 54
Thank you, thank you @Tin_House for making my dreams come true with this package!
pickContinuing my @Tin_House rabbit hole-how to describe this- poetic prose, maybe. Stories are only a paragraph, a page, or 2, yet say a lot in a few words. God can be there, but often the absence is more prominent. One Amazon review had me laughing. Very quick read, but deep at times.
Happy pub week to Joy Williams! Joy and her Tin House Summer Workshop group are celebrating her new collection, NINETY-NINE STORIES OF GOD, with some candid reading.
Rainy day reading. #joywilliams Thanks @tin_house and @aliasjake for the galley!
Joy Williams on writing short stories. (8 of 9.)
I wish I could even begin to explain how good these ninety-nine stories are. Some are tiny like this one and still hit hard and some are longer but never long. There is grace and intelligence and surprise all over the place. Joy Williams is a master.
