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    Miracle and Other Christmas Stories: Stories
    Unavailable
    Miracle and Other Christmas Stories: Stories
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    Miracle and Other Christmas Stories: Stories
    Ebook404 pages6 hours

    Miracle and Other Christmas Stories: Stories

    By Connie Willis

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, Connie Willis capture the timeless essence of generosity and goodwill in this magical collection if Christmas stories.  These eight tales-two of which have never before been published-boldly reimagine the stories of Christmas while celebrating the power of love and compassion.  This enchanting treasury includes:

    "Miracle," in which a young woman's carefully devised plans to find romance go awry when her guardian angel shows her the true meaning of love
    "In Coppelius's Toyshop," where a jaded narcissist finds himself trapped in a crowded toy store at Christmastime
    "Epiphany," in which three modern-day wisemen embark on a quest unlike any they've ever experienced
    "Inn," where a choir singer gives shelter to a homeless man and his pregnant wife-only to learn later that there's much more to the couple than meets the eye
    And more
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateNov 4, 2009
    ISBN9780307573667
    Unavailable
    Miracle and Other Christmas Stories: Stories

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    Reviews for Miracle and Other Christmas Stories

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Quirky, different Christmas stories ... Connie Willis is a sci fi writer, so all have a bit of a supernatural bent. The introduction lists her favourite Christmas stories and authors - on my bucket list to find some of them!
    • 4/5
      A collection of Christmas stories that all fall somewhere in the SF/F genre. The writing here is good, but only a couple of the stories really landed for me. I had the same problem with most of them that I have with most short stories: I get to the end and go, "Okay?" *shrug* The title story was really good, and I loved the introduction and the after material, which included recs for Christmas reading and watching. YMMV.
    • 3/5
      The Christmas season is almost the ideal setting for Coniie Willis's going through the rapids frantic pacing and several of the stories are in that mode. A couple are closer to horror stories. But it helps to like Christmas stories and be Christian, which I don't generally and am not.
    • 4/5
      I'm getting into the holiday spirit and thought I'd read this thematic collection. I have to admit to a bit of trepidation, but this was actually a pretty good collection.

      • Miracle. 1991
      I'm guessing this one was Willis' favorite, as it's first, longest, and the title story, but I thought it was the worst in the book (although it's not bad). This is probably because I have never seen EITHER "Miracle on 34th Street" or "It's a Wonderful Life," and the story is really all about said movies, and the contrasts between them (in the context of a harried office worker finding the love that's right in front of her rather than the one she's been chasing after, with the help of an annoying hippie Christmas spirit.

      • Inn. 1993
      Very non-subtle, but effective story. I cried. A church is busy getting ready for their Christmas Pageant, simultaneously, however, they are all too ready to leave needy homeless people out in the cold in the name of safety. One woman takes pity on the young couple outside - who are, of course, actually Mary & Joseph, lost on their way to Bethlehem.

      • In Coppelius's Toyshop. 1996
      A horror story. A real jerk of a guy gets stuck in a toy shop (that strongly resembles FAO Schwartz) forever!

      • The Pony. 1985
      Excellent, very short story. Ominous presents! Ha!

      • Adaptation. 1994
      A recently divorced man is having a hard time with his ex-wife, who is seeking to separate him from his little girl at Christmas time. The management at the bookstore where he works aren't easy to deal with either, and demanding author-signings are the icing on the cake. But the spirits from Dickens' Christmas Carol may help him get through the season...

      • Cat's Paw. 1999
      An homage to the classic Holmsian murder-mystery-at-the-manor tale, only with some twists. This manor is inhabited by a woman who's a premier researcher into primate intelligence... Starts out seeming fairly typical... but it gets pretty good!

      • Newsletter. 1997
      This one's a take-off on the whole Invasion of the Body Snatchers theme. This season, people are actually seeming to get NICER around Christmas time. But they also seem to all be wearing hats... or wigs. What are they hiding? Very funny.

      • Epiphany. 1999
      A liberal reverend, a black atheist and a retired English teacher all find themselves traveling down a snowy road, following a mysterious compulsion to head West, in this story of the Second Coming, paralleling the original tale of the Three Wise Men. Why should the Second Coming be full of wrath, blood and disaster? Why shouldn't it occur in the form of... a carnival?
    • 4/5
      As always, Willis' is wonderful. The Christmas theme started to drag on a me a bit by the end, but each story is good and I think they would benefit from being read a few at a time rather than all straight through. As a bonus, Willis includes a bunch of recommendations of books and movies that will either help you get in the holiday spirit or are interesting takes on some of the classic stories (she thinks the Muppet Christmas Carol is one of the best film adaptations).
    • 2/5
      Rating: 2* of fiveThe Book Description: Connie Willis loves Christmas. "I even like the parts most people hate--shopping in crowded malls and reading Christmas newsletters and seeing relatives and standing in baggage check-in lines at the airport. Okay, I lied. Nobody likes standing in baggage check-in lines," she writes. Willis knows it's hard to write good Christmas stories: the subject matter is limited, the writer has to balance between sentiment and skepticism, and too many fall into the Victorian habit of killing off saintly children and poor people. Here she presents eight marvelous Christmas tales, two of which appear for the first time.The stories range from "The Pony," about a psychotherapist who doesn't believe that Christmas gifts can answer our deepest longings, and "Inn," in which a choir member rehearsing for the Christmas pageant becomes part of the original Christmas story, to "Newsletter," where an invasion of parasitic creatures causes unusually good behavior in their hosts, and "Epiphany," a story of three unlikely Magi following signs through a North American winter toward the returned Jesus Christ. "Miracle" is a comic romance echoing Willis's favorite Yuletide movie, Miracle on 34th Street, and "Catspaw" is a homage to the traditional Christmas murder mystery with a sly, science-fictional twist. The collection also includes "In Coppelius' Toyshop," in which a bad guy is trapped in Toyland, and "Adaptation," a Dickensian story about what it means to keep Christmas in your heart.My Review: How very handy! Another sales blurb that one-lines the stories, freeing me to offer my opinion of the collection.Which is negative. Damn it all.Yuletide is a favorite season of mine. I like cold weather, and fires in fireplaces, and decorating with all sorts of shiny, tacky thises and thatses all lit up by teensy white lights festooning the entirety of my living space. I like street lamps hung with snowflake-shaped flags, and wreaths on truck grilles, and peppermint ice cream. Especially peppermint ice cream.Stories about Christmas aren't my usual atheist fodder, but I've heard so many good things about this collection...and I'm never willing to let a set opinion ossify without challenging it...so "try some more Willis" whispered the Personification of Evil, in a bid to render my holidays hideous. It worked. The humor here is forced, the wit is witless, and the shiny, tacky bright baubles that stories often are have been cracked by being dropped on the hard floor of ~meh~.Connie Willis and I don't fit. I love her ideas, and I like some of her sentences, and I would deeply appreciate it if she stopped screwing things up by writing them half as well as they deserve. (This knock also goes for Neil Gaiman.) In fact, I would like some sort of legislative action to compel this sort of writer to generate ideas and then give them to others to execute.As that is impracticable, I resign myself to the one course available to me that doesn't infringe on anyone's civil liberties: I'll avoid further contact with the irritant, in this case Willis's ~meh~ execution of wonderful ideas.
    • 4/5
      An extremely enjoyable take on Christmas stories. For lovers of A Christmas Carol, Adaptation is not to miss.
    • 4/5
      This jumped at me off the stacks as I was leaving the library. As it was December, I thought "why not"? I'd never read Connie Willis before, never heard of her. I was so very pleased to have this book. The stories were a great length, letting me fall completely into them, yet able to finish without sacrificing sleep. And fall I did! I loved most of the stories, liked the others. It really got me into Christmas, which was what I'd hoped. Now I've got to read some more of Ms. Willis' work.
    • 5/5
      First Line: I love Christmas.Connie Willis, one of my favorite authors, loves Christmas and doesn't much care for Hans Christian Andersen: "Nobody, before Andersen came along, had thought of writing such depressing Christmas stories. Even Dickens, who had killed a fair number of children in his books, didn't kill Tiny Tim. But Andersen, apparently hell-bent on ruining everyone's holidays, froze innocent children, melted loyal toys into lumps of lead, and chopped harmless fir trees who were just standing there in the forest, minding their own business, into kindling."Willis goes on to say in her Introduction to Miracle and Other Christmas Stories that she prefers Miracle on 34th Street to It's a Wonderful Life when watching holiday films (so do I), and she joyfully rolls with abandon through lists of her favorite Christmas stories. What she sets out to do in this book is provide all sorts of well-written, fun holiday short stories, and she succeeds brilliantly.For those of you who are more familiar with Willis's science fiction novels, be warned that these stories aren't exclusively in that genre. There's something for everyone. For example, "Inn" is a church choir story with a time-travel twist; "Miracle" is a delightful duel between Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life; and "Cat's Paw" is a British country house Christmas mystery.My two favorites are "Adaptation" about a divorced bookstore employee trying to spend Christmas Eve with his daughter, and "In Coppelius's Toyshop" in which a world-class jerk gets his just desserts. And if that isn't enough, Willis includes lists of her twelve favorite Christmas stories and movies at the very end.Normally I don't seek out holiday-themed reads. If they fall into my hands, all's well and good. I'm very glad this particular Christmas book fell into my hands this year. I love Christmas but have found myself lacking the true spirit. (I don't want to sound like Hans Christian Andersen, so I won't go into the reasons why I feel this way.) Miracle and Other Christmas Stories went a very long way in bringing some much-needed cheer into my rather bleak frame of mind. Connie Willis continues to be one of my Go-To Authors.
    • 5/5
      Connie Willis loves Christmas. This book of eight short stories is both entertaining and though-provoking. My favorites were "Miracle" and Epiphany", the first and last stories in the book. The first is a chaotic, magical story where nothing seems to go right, the last a modern retelling of the Three Magi. And don't skip the introduction or the afterward, you'll find references to great Christmas stories there, as well as in the included lists of twelve great Christmas reads and twelve great Christmas movies.
    • 4/5
      This was a Christmas gift from Margaret. I enjoyed it. I haven't ever really learned how to read short stories, I always feel like I must read them like a book, each one, straight through, from beginning to end. Well, this book went pretty fast, but I didn't care for all the stories. I'm not that excited about Willis's writing style, though she comes highly recommended by Margaret. It's fine and fun and easy to read. Sometimes she seems repetitive and the style seems kind of stilted, particularly for stories that to all appearances are supposed to be pretty contemporary. A few of the stories (The Pony, Epiphany, Adaptation) I didn't really get what had happened at the end. I don't like being left up-in-the-air. My favorites, though, were The Inn (time travel! yeah!) and In Coppelius' Toyshop (weirdly creepy).
    • 5/5
      Thoroughly enjoyable collection, especially the title "Miracle" story.