We look forward to seeing you on your next visit to the library. Find a location near you.

Ninety-Nine Stories of God
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Book Cover
Average Rating
5 star
 
(0)
4 star
 
(1)
3 star
 
(0)
2 star
 
(0)
1 star
 
(0)
Published:
Tin House Books 2016
Status:
Checked Out
Description

A New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year at Esquire, Seattle Times, Minnesota Star Tribune, Huffington Post, and Publishers Weekly.



From "quite possibly America's best living writer of short stories" (NPR), Ninety-Nine Stories of God finds Joy Williams reeling between the sublime and the surreal, knocking down the barriers between the workaday and the divine.


Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams has a one-of-a-kind gift for capturing both the absurdity and the darkness of everyday life. In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, she takes on one of mankind's most confounding preoccupations: the Supreme Being.



This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It's the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass—a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams's characters, however, are like the rest of us: anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for Him when He's standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he's in line to get a shingles vaccination. At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists.
Also in This Series
Formats
Adobe EPUB eBook
Works on all eReaders (except Kindles), desktop computers and mobile devices with reading apps installed.
Kindle Book
Works on Kindles and devices with a Kindle app installed.
OverDrive Read
Need Help?
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
More Like This
Other Editions and Formats
More Copies In LINK+
Loading LINK+ Copies...
More Details
Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
07/12/2016
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781941040362
ASIN:
B0184I6ABW
Reviews from GoodReads
Loading GoodReads Reviews.
Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Joy Williams. (2016). Ninety-Nine Stories of God. Tin House Books.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Joy Williams. 2016. Ninety-Nine Stories of God. Tin House Books.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Joy Williams, Ninety-Nine Stories of God. Tin House Books, 2016.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Joy Williams. Ninety-Nine Stories of God. Tin House Books, 2016.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
Copy Details
LibraryOwnedAvailable
Shared Digital Collection00
Staff View
Grouped Work ID:
cbdd934f-809e-c9ad-f940-bb118566e523
Go To Grouped Work
Needs Update?:
No
Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 18:04:36
Date Updated:
Jun 12, 2018 18:04:36
Last Metadata Check:
Oct 02, 2023 14:53:15
Last Metadata Change:
Jun 04, 2023 14:24:01
Last Availability Check:
Mar 24, 2024 09:33:08
Last Availability Change:
Oct 31, 2023 00:31:15
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Mar 28, 2024 02:11:39

OverDrive Product Record

sortTitle
NinetyNine Stories of God
crossRefId
2717175
images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0044-1/{4A28E0C7-33D5-4A71-99D7-1733589228EA}Img100.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0044-1/{4A28E0C7-33D5-4A71-99D7-1733589228EA}Img200.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0044-1/4A2/8E0/C7/{4A28E0C7-33D5-4A71-99D7-1733589228EA}Img150.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0044-1/4A2/8E0/C7/{4A28E0C7-33D5-4A71-99D7-1733589228EA}Img400.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
formats
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781941040362
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • identifiers:
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B0184I6ABW
      • name: Kindle Book
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781941040362
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • id: ebook-overdrive
mediaType
eBook
primaryCreator
    • role: Author
    • name: Joy Williams
id
4a28e0c7-33d5-4a71-99d7-1733589228ea
title
Ninety-Nine Stories of God
starRating
3.2
dateAdded
2016-08-11T19:05:38.9-04:00
contentDetails
      • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=2717175
      • type: text/html
      • account:
          • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
          • id: 1151

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain
False
images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0044-1/{4A28E0C7-33D5-4A71-99D7-1733589228EA}Img100.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0044-1/{4A28E0C7-33D5-4A71-99D7-1733589228EA}Img200.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0044-1/4A2/8E0/C7/{4A28E0C7-33D5-4A71-99D7-1733589228EA}Img150.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0044-1/4A2/8E0/C7/{4A28E0C7-33D5-4A71-99D7-1733589228EA}Img400.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
isPublicPerformanceAllowed
False
formats
      • fileName: NinetyNineStoriesofG_9781941040362_2717175
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 621862
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781941040362
      • rights:
            • type: Copying
            • value: 0
            • type: Printing
            • value: 0
            • type: Lending
            • value: 0
            • type: ReadAloud
            • value: 0
            • type: ExpirationRights
            • value: 0
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • onSaleDate: 7/12/2016
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=4a28e0c7-33d5-4a71-99d7-1733589228ea&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: NinetyNineStoriesofG_2717175
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 0
      • identifiers:
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B0184I6ABW
      • name: Kindle Book
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • onSaleDate: 7/12/2016
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=4a28e0c7-33d5-4a71-99d7-1733589228ea&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: NinetyNineStoriesofG_9781941040362_2717175
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 621880
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781941040362
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-overdrive
      • onSaleDate: 7/12/2016
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=4a28e0c7-33d5-4a71-99d7-1733589228ea&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
languages
      • code: en
      • name: English
creators
      • role: Author
      • fileAs: Williams, Joy
      • bioText: Joy Williams is the author of four novels, four previous story collections, and the book of essays Ill Nature. She's been nominated for the National Book Award, The Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent title is The Visiting Privilege: New & Collected Stories. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Laramie, Wyoming.
      • name: Joy Williams
subjects
      • value: Fiction
      • value: Literature
      • value: Short Stories
      • value: Humor (Fiction)
publishDate
2016-07-12T00:00:00-04:00
publishDateText
07/12/2016
otherFormatIdentifiers
      • type: ISBN
      • value: 9781941040355
mediaType
eBook
shortDescription

A New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year at Esquire, Seattle Times, Minnesota Star Tribune, Huffington Post, and Publishers Weekly.

From "quite possibly America's best living writer of short stories" (NPR), Ninety-Nine Stories of God finds Joy Williams reeling between the sublime and the surreal, knocking down the barriers between the workaday and the divine.

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams has a one-of-a-kind gift for capturing both the absurdity and the darkness of everyday life. In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, she takes on one of mankind's most confounding preoccupations: the Supreme Being.

This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It's the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass—a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these...
isOwnedByCollections
True
title
Ninety-Nine Stories of God
fullDescription

A New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year at Esquire, Seattle Times, Minnesota Star Tribune, Huffington Post, and Publishers Weekly.

From "quite possibly America's best living writer of short stories" (NPR), Ninety-Nine Stories of God finds Joy Williams reeling between the sublime and the surreal, knocking down the barriers between the workaday and the divine.

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams has a one-of-a-kind gift for capturing both the absurdity and the darkness of everyday life. In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, she takes on one of mankind's most confounding preoccupations: the Supreme Being.

This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It's the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass—a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams's characters, however, are like the rest of us: anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for Him when He's standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he's in line to get a shingles vaccination. At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists.
sortTitle
NinetyNine Stories of God
crossRefId
2717175
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: The New York Times Book Review
      • content: Wry and playful, except for when densely allusive and willfully obtuse, Ninety-Nine Stories of God is a treasure trove of bafflements and tiny masterpieces.
      • premium: False
      • source: James Wood;The New Yorker
      • content: [The stories in Ninety-Nine Stories of God] miniaturize the qualities found in Joy Williams's celebrated short stories: concision, jumped connections, singular details, brutal humor. I say "celebrated" because Williams has been writing stories for forty years, and for forty years her literary peers—from Ann Beattie to Raymond Carver, from James Salter to Don DeLillo—have regarded her work with a kind of Masonic fellow-feeling. Yet she remains, in some ways, a difficult, and certainly an original, writer. She writes at a slight angle to the culture, literary and otherwise. Her fiction is easy to follow and hard to fathom; easy to enjoy and harder to absorb.
      • premium: False
      • source: Boston Globe
      • content: [Q]uietly splendid. . . . I believe in art, and Ninety-Nine Stories of God feels like prayer to me.
      • premium: False
      • source: San Francisco Chronicle
      • content: Not many writers can launch a premise like "The Lord was in line at the pharmacy counter waiting to get His shingles shot" without falling into gimmickry, but Williams—long known as a master story writer—twists the scenario to an eerily moving effect. In manipulating our most deeply rooted expectations, shooting them through a prism of irony and wonder, she has created a cockeyed book of common prayer.
      • premium: False
      • source: The Minnesota Star Tribune, Best Fiction of the Year
      • content: Baffling and illuminating, witty and disturbing, these 99 religious-flavored vignettes may not tell you why we are here or where we are going, but they do possess the power to entrance. The divine Joy Williams continues to work in mysterious ways.
      • premium: False
      • source: The Seattle Times
      • content: Sly and wonderful. . . . [Williams is] after some big truths in a few words, stories so short that some of them could fit on Twitter, except they're too smart and not mean enough.
      • premium: False
      • source: The Seattle Times, Best Books of 2016
      • content: A collection of fiction for our fractured times from a modern master — funny, profound and redemptive.
      • premium: False
      • source: Huffington Post
      • content: Williams says more in a page-long scene than most can say in a chapter; it's fitting, then, that her very short collection manages to encompass such an eternal theme with wit and grace.
      • premium: False
      • source: Huffington Post, Best Fiction of 2016
      • content: Read together, Joy Williams' stories are a humanist manifesto, a celebration of our most mysterious values, desires and prejudices.
      • premium: False
      • source: New York Magazine
      • content: Williams addicts will mainline [Ninety-Nine Stories of God]; newcomers should chase the high with last year's The Visiting Privilege.
      • premium: False
      • source: Oxford American
      • content: While Marilynn Robinson (stately, assured) is so often held up as the major Christian believer in American letters, I would argue that, along with Annie Dillard, Joy Williams is the true seeker. Her stories are probes sent out into the universe.
      • premium: False
      • source: The New York Times
      • content: Masterly . . . Ms. Williams is her usual funny, irreverent self.
      • premium: False
      • source: The Los Angeles Review of Books
      • content: "Joy Williams is our contemporary O'Connor with a mix of Protestant sacraments . . . and a Zen Koan consciousness."
      • premium: False
      • source: Electric Literature, Best Short Story Collections of 2016
      • content: Every Joy Williams publication is a cause for celebration, and Ninety-Nine Stories of God shows Williams in her usual biting, insightful, and darkly humorous form.
      • premium: False
      • source: Lenny Letter
      • content: Each story is beautifully strange and meditative in an unexpected but glorious way. . . . Inarguably inspired, Ninety-Nine Stories of God is a devotional for modern cynics and believers alike.
      • premium: False
      • source: The Millions
      • content: Ninety-Nine Stories of God is gorgeously written, sentence-to-sentence, and arrives in vignettes that are condensed but not constrained, tight but not dry.
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        Starred review from February 8, 2016
        In Williams’s hands (The Visiting Privilege), a “story of God” can apparently be almost anything. Her slender new collection includes in its 99 stories pithy flash-fiction pieces about mothers, wives, writers, and dogs, anecdotes from the lives of Tolstoy and Kafka, newspaper clipping–like meditations on O.J. Simpson and Ted Kaczynski, conversational asides (the story “Museum” consists entirely of the line “We were not interested the way we thought we would be interested”), and, finally, actual stories about God—a particularly put-upon, bewildered God who seems to have lost the thread of his creation somewhere along the line. Here, the Holy Ghost is just as likely to alight in a slaughterhouse as to visit a demolition derby or appear to William James or Simone Weil, both of whom have their own brush with transcendence. The best of Williams’s humor, and her wonderful feel for characters, is present in pieces such as “Elephants Never Forget God,” in which James Agee describes a movie he’d like to make, or “Giraffe,” in which an aging gardener suddenly feels the presence of the divine. Somewhere in the neighborhood of Jim Harrison’s Letters to Yesenin, these stories are 100% Williams: funny, unsettling, and mysterious, to be puzzled over and enjoyed across multiple readings.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        Starred review from May 1, 2016
        "Hell is unpleasant. Heaven is more pleasant." Williams, maker of superb short fictions, plumbs the distinction in this slender, evocative collection. Absent a direct statement otherwise, we should understand the deity here to be something along the lines of what old John Lennon said: "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." The God that lurks in Williams' brief, elegant stories is very often puzzled by creation, as when he tries to understand why humans should so have it in for wolves: "You really are so intelligent," he tells one pack, "and have such glorious eyes. Why do you think you're hounded so?" Ever gracious, the wolves thank God for including them in his plan, leaving him to ponder--well, never mind, since we don't want to step on the punch line. Suffice it to say that sometimes God shows up on time, sometimes not, sometimes not at all; sometimes he extends grace, and sometimes, as with a colony of bats he's been living with in a cave, he "had done nothing to save them." This isn't theology in the Joel Osteen vein, but it is deep and thought-through theology all the same, and even when God doesn't figure in the narrative by name, the divine presence is immanent. And sometimes, of course, God is there without announcing himself, taking the form of, say, that homeless fellow who mutteringly assures us, "You don't get older during the time spent in church." Seldom occupying more than a couple of pages, Williams' stories are headed by a number, one to 99, but carry an "undertitle" at the end that glosses the tale in question, sometimes quite offhandedly: in the case of that heaven and hell distinction, for example, it's "PRETTY MUCH THE SAME, THEN," while an argument about the impossibility of really knowing God is slugged, rather more mysteriously, "NAKED MIND." Admirers of Williams--and anyone who treasures a story well told should be one--will find much to like here.

        COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        September 1, 2016

        As Pulitzer finalist Williams observes, "Franz Kafka once called his writing a form of prayer," and these stories are indeed prayer-like in their sculpted simplicity--and proverb-like in their investigation of the world's mysterious ways. A humanist goes mad countering the idea of intelligent life elsewhere, a brilliant painter continues her work after a debilitating accident, a child and a lion discuss near-death experience, and a man denies his long sober mother a martini on her deathbed as "she'd regret it." From a reading of Dante's Inferno on Good Friday to Philip K. Dick's asking about a girl's golden fish necklace, belief figures as both backdrop and content here. But the Lord's intervention in our lives can be uneven. VERDICT Perfect little gems; it's rare when such short works (many the length of this review) can truly satisfy.

        Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        Starred review from April 1, 2016
        Fans of Williams will not be disappointed in this latest offering. The stories, rather than devotional, or a sweet reminiscence of divine intervention, are a series of vignettes that throw into sharp relief the rippling something in the back of humanity's daily lives. When God appears by name, he is a character, bemused and sometimes befuddled by the creatures he has created, curious and sometimes surprised by the features humanity has bestowed on him. The Lord appears intermittently, trying out new material. It's as if Williams took the song What If God Was One of Us? and gave it flesh, pondering God's visit with wolves or adoption of a turtle. Though God does not appear by name in every story, something of the divine echoes in each, something larger than the humans that populate each chapter. Each story is brief, with some less than a paragraph. Some amaze, some are quietly powerful, some gracefully absurd. Much like the divine, Williams' prose is simple and brutal, thoughtful and haunting. A spare but startling book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        March 25, 2002
        A major sea change works wonders for romance stalwart Graham (Night of the Blackbird), yielding a suspenseful, sexy thriller set in the Florida Keys. Sheila Warren has gone missing; given her penchant for drugging and carousing, this surprises no one but her old friend Kelsey Cunningham. Kelsey, who has a romantic history with Sheila's old boyfriend and local PI Dane Whitelaw, confronts him when she learns he was the last to see her. Though Dane knows Sheila is dead—the killer sent him a photo of the body with evidence that would frame him for the murder—he keeps mum. Kelsey moves into the duplex Sheila shared with their friend Cindy. With the help of boatman Jorge Marti; Sheila's ex, Larry; and Dane (the only one who knows he's looking for a body), Kelsey tries to find her. The four fear that she is a victim of a serial killer known as the Necktie Strangler, but they also suspect that Kelsey's reprobate stepfather, Andy Latham, had a hand in her disappearance. Things get more complicated when Kelsey surmises that Dane is the killer; Kelsey and Cindy are attacked; Kelsey's ex, Nate, has a run-in with Andy; and Dane learns a dangerous secret of Jorge's. The latter leads to a confrontation with one of Sheila's playmates, a local drug smuggler. Though the prose often goes purple and the dialogue sags in spots, Graham builds jagged suspense that will keep readers guessing up to the final pages. (Apr.)Forecast:With more than 20 million copies of her books in print—including some
        New York Times bestsellers—Graham is going strong, poised to win new fans with the help of a major ad/promo campaign and multi-city author tour.

popularity
210
publisher
Tin House Books
links
    • self:
        • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/4a28e0c7-33d5-4a71-99d7-1733589228ea/metadata
        • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
id
4a28e0c7-33d5-4a71-99d7-1733589228ea
starRating
3.1
bisacCodes
      • code: FIC019000
      • description: Fiction / Literary
      • code: FIC026000
      • description: FICTION / Religious
      • code: FIC029000
      • description: Fiction / Short Stories (single author)