A Lot Like Christmas cover art

A Lot Like Christmas

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About this listen

Holiday stories and traditions enchantingly reimagined - with an insightfully satirical twist. Featuring five stories new to this collection, plus seven previously published stories, now all collected together for the first time.

From the award-winning author of Crosstalk.

No one could ask for a better present than a collection of Connie Willis Christmas tales. These are amazing stories, representing all the best of the Connie Willis experience: true Christmas gifts to her many fans. They are full of humor, absurdity, human foibles, tragedy, joy, and hope. They both send up and embrace many of the best Christmas traditions, such as the Christmas newsletter, Secret Santas, office parties, holiday pageants, and Christmas dinners (both elaborate and spare). There are ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come; debates over which is the best Christmas movie (Connie argues for the original Miracle on 34th Street, hands down); Rockettes; modern-day Magi; and the triumph of generosity over greed.

©2017 Connie Willis (P)2017 Recorded Books Anthologies Anthologies & Short Stories Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Holidays Short Stories Winter Christmas Witty Tradition
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Love Connie Willis and these stories are great for listening to as Christmas approaches. Very cheering when queuing or sitting in Xmas traffic jams! Also Willis provides a list of good Xmas films, stories and tv episodes at the end. A great selection and really useful. So have a pen and paper handy for the epilogue!

Christmas stories for grown ups

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This is a collection of Christmas stories with science fiction and fantasy themes. Very few contemporary Christmas stories are any good, so it's pleasant to find stories that are clever, funny, and mostly unsentimental. Potential buyers should be aware that some of the stories have already been published in Willis's other, similar collection 'Miracle'. However, there's enough in this book to make it good value, even if you've already read Miracle. Oddly, one (and only one) story from Miracle did not make it into this collection -- The Pony. I can sort-of see why -- it's kind-of dark; but so is Coppelius' Toyshop, which is included.

Few of the stories in this collection have the depth and intensity of, say, Fire Watch, but all are thought-provoking, even the more whimsical ones. They are written in a variety of different styles, as I guess is to be expected from a collection that spans twenty years or more. Some are a little dated, in the sense that the author is writing about future times which are, for us, in the past. This, I guess, is an occupational hazard for a science fiction writer. Even the introduction -- a part of most books that I skip -- is entertaining.

There are a few slightly odd accents, but not bizarre enough to spoil the writing.

If you only read one Christmas-themed book in your life it should, of course, be A Christmas Carol. If you've read that, you should read this next.




The best Christmas stories since Dickens

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The dialogue in this is so familiar it made me laugh out loud more than once. There are dark stories (I am sure I've been to the toystore, for instance), but overall it's a great book

Really enjoyed this

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