There's nothing I want to say about this small, intricate, deceptively simple book that hasn't already been said by Justin Taylor in his excellent NYT review, so allow me just to give you the link... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/bo...Enjoy. Ponder. Reflect. Laugh. Despair. Wonder. It's all there.

If you or I wrote these stories and submitted them to a publisher, they'd be rejected. Bizarre and nonsensical, even the brevity of the pieces doesn't save them from tediousness. They may provide your eyes with some exercise . . .in eyeball-rolling at the author's pretentious "cleverness." Obviously not my cup of tea.

I didn't find these minute stories to be intriguing or funny, just rather odd and tiresome. They read as random thoughts that made the author feel clever. Each one is like a movie that ends in exactly the wrong spot and makes you regret watching it in the first place. Obviously well appreciated by others, but quite unappealing to me.

Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey--Redux[updated 10/21/17] *3.6 starsThe 99 sketches in this book reminded me of the old Saturday Night Live "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey," two perfect examples being, If you get invited to your first orgy, don't just show up nude. That's a common mistake. You have to let nudity 'happen.'If you ever discover that what you're seeing is a play within a play, just slow down, take a deep breath and hold on for the ride of your life. Most though are a little longer (no...

I have intended to read Joy Williams for some time and now, thanks to Tin House Books and NetGalley I've had a great introduction. These are most definitely not traditional stories of God's intercession with man as read in religious works. These are everyday experiences that reveal the human and seem to border on something other. At times, The Lord shows up personally to check in on humans, but not in a majestic way, more in a personal, often perplexed way given how humankind seems to be dealing...

I guess "46 Thoughts Joy Williams Had Before Bed, 35 Items of Color Commentary by Your Aunt on Science Stories, OJ Simpson, and Other Assorted News Items, and 18 Short Stories" didn't fit as well on the cover page. Each of the titular 99 pieces in this book is at most a couple pages long, and most are far shorter than that. For all of her plaudits, I found this slender volume by Williams to be frustratingly padded out. Several of the so-called stories are little more than a sentence that she pre...

Great concept, huge imagination and variety! But...Most of these stories just weren't strong, funny, crazy, interesting enough.* 32 stories were absurd in a silly way:F.e.: The Lord wants to give a dinner party but can never come up with twelve guests. Whatever steward He has at the time suggests many names, but the Lord can’t get excited about any of them. At least the menu was determined long ago. There would be a mixture of fifty pure chemicals—sugar, amino and fatty acids, vitamins and miner...

I thought that Joy Williams collection of short stories, 99 Stories of God might be a sort of collection of fictional devotions. And I suppose they might be, if one expanded the definition of "devotion" beyond recognition! The stories are very short, somewhat like those of Lydia Davis; most of them are one or two pages and but many are even shorter-a paragraph or a few lines. But how wonderful they are! God figures in them but often obliquely. Sometimes He seems to be irrelevant to the lives of

I'm not above saying that I didn't get about 70% of the stories in this collection.STORIES SIX AND SEVEN WERE SUBLIME

Hypnotic, intelligent, lovely book of (loosely) linked flash fiction - Williams is a GREAT writer and many of the vignettes stand out as masterpieces of the short short form (I particularly like 25: "Veracity"). I'll be recommending this book for a long time. I did have slightly less affection for some of the stories in which God APPEARS instead of simply exists in the background - those lean a bit too hard on their punchlines and speak to befuddlement instead of the calm slant observation that

[UPDATED REVIEW: 23 JULY '16] Many reviewers here on GR have mentioned that the "stories" in this book might better be called zen koans. I checked my copy of Alan Watts' The Way of Zen to see if this description is apt. (It is.) Watts says the koan is a type of puzzle, the answer to which must be intuitively and spontaneously grasped. Some examples: Question : Everybody has a place of birth. Where is your place of birth? Answer : Early this morning I ate white rice gruel. Now I’m hungry agai

Gosh, I can't remember the last time I gave a book one star. I found the stories weird and puzzling. Many of these short fictional stories I felt had no connection to God. Thanks to Tin House Books for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book! It's a bunch of vignettes, some irreverent, some poetic, others peculiar. Still, they make a cohesive whole. It's an easy ready, and it's something different. I highly recommend this book.

It seems wrong to give Williams 3 stars because she is a great writer and I loved 'The Visiting Privilege', a truly wonderful book, but this, while at times intriguing, funny and wise, contains scraps from the table really. Not enough nutrition.

This book was sent to me years ago as part of a subscription box, and I immediately put it in a pile to donate. A book about God? Not for me.But when I found that pile again, while cleaning out a closet, I started flipping through this and realized it wasn't what I'd thought. It's not preachy or moralizing or trite. It makes no particular religious claims. These stories are short and inscrutable and charming and odd, and I was quickly sucked in.It's often difficult to pinpoint which character or...

95 The American philosopher William James posited that overbelief was essential to a lived life, and that only when we open ourselves to God’s influence are our deepest destinies fulfilled. God provided William with many things, including (according to his sister Alice) the ability to be “born fresh every morning.” He also gave him a brother, Henry, who He determined would be “younger and shallower and vainer.” William quite agreed with this assessment.96 When a woman sits down to a meal alone,

I would say it is difficult to form an opinion on an author just from super short fiction, and this book of 99 stories is a collection of flash pieces - some are as small as a sentence fragment, while others are a page or two. Some of them have characters facing their mortality (where God surely is) and others have God wandering through the randomness of life trying to make sense of it all. There were several clever laughable moments but really I need to read her longer short stories before I ha...

After reading Joy Williams story in the Sept 14, 2014 issue of the New Yorker while traveling to Mexico, I remembered I had this book on my Kindle. Coincidentally, I was listening to "God and Mr. Gomez" and I'd just finished Thomas Moore's "A Religion of One's Own." God was coming at me in my reading and as it turned out God was everywhere during this trip. Williams 99 mostly very short pieces definitely alerted me to God's presence for she offered "the Lord" in a myriad of connotations, incarna...

Such a fantastic piece of work from Joy Williams, who is incomparable in every way. Impossible not to read in one sitting. What an examination. What a brilliant mind.

Ninety-nine stories that are not all about God. What we have is a surprise box of anecdotes, news, allusions, satire, precepts, retellings, and stories with The Lord as a modern-day present and random figure. Some are direct and are easy to comprehend. Most require more time and attention to get to the point, but still, not quite yet. Overall, I think this collection is meant to be a dazzling puzzle, a curious collection that is open to interpretation for all.