¶ Episode Welcome, TBR, and Sponsors
listening to all the more books. I'm Sharifa. Today is October 16th, 2025. And today I'm going to tell you about a couple of short story collections I absolutely love. Now both of these collections lean in speculative territory, but... There's really something for everybody in these two collections. One of them, for instance, just has some straight up fiction stories. Like it's a mix. Sci-fi, fantasy, contemporary fiction. The other collection blends satire, dystopia, near future, and is just...
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¶ Lesser Known Monsters of 21st Century
So the first collection I want to talk about is Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu and I thought of... this collection because I just saw that Fu has a new book coming out in 2026. The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts. And it sounds really great. Like I have to pick up this book. And if the name sounds familiar, Fu is also the author of The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, which I know a lot of people read and loved.
I had not read Fu when I picked up Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century. So their style of writing and their perspective was all very new to me. But I discovered that I absolutely... loved it through this short story collection. So this is the collection that has some speculative fiction, some straight up fiction. It's really well rounded. This isn't linked short stories there isn't a specific through line that I can find that connects these stories in any meaningful way but it is
a great collection to pick up and put down at your leisure because every story I found compelling. I of course had my favorites, but... I just enjoyed the total experience of reading. this book so it collects 12 stories some of them are sci-fi some fantasy some contemporary fiction there's fabulism there's all sorts of stuff and the
thing that made this a successful read for me is that I'm not particularly prone to reading out of order when it comes to short story collections. I'm very, like, by the book. Quite literally. I read from front to back. I just have a problem with... going out of order. So in a short story collection, the first story really has to grab me in order to keep me moving through the book. And that's exactly what happened with Fu's collection.
story is pre-simulation consultation xf007867 and that story hit me right in the feels it is such an interesting take on simulation fiction. So in this story, we're not seeing the simulation, we're not reading about a client's experience with... A simulation, we're reading about a client going through the screening process to receive a simulated experience. So it's this conversation between the client.
and the simulation operator. And through this dialogue, you're learning about the motivations of the client for going for this simulation. It has a lot of, it's very touching. It's very heartfelt. And I... was very enthusiastic about reading the next few stories after getting through it because it made me feel a lot of things and think a lot of things.
So there are a lot of other very relatable stories in the collection. One of them is a coming of age story that is about a girl who grows wings and... This young woman has a group of friends and they're kind of on the cusp of going down separate paths. So they're basically... growing apart and you can sense that you know they're just on the verge like they're still hanging on a little bit but
There are other friend groups they're going to now. But then this event, this strange phenomenon, causes them all to come together one last time because...
You know, something that unusual is bound to bring people together. And it's a really, again, very touching story about an event a lot of us can relate to but told in a really interesting way and there are stories about like blobs that are in the ocean that are consuming everything and an unhappy bride that ends up those two stories the blob and the bride come together in a really unexpected way
And there's a story about a time cube that can reverse or advance the age of whatever's in the cube and what happens when a woman who's dealing with depression encounters it. and about a haunted doll there is so much like it spoke to me I love horror stories I love sci-fi fantasy fabulism all the things and it just felt like a great book to get all of my favorite things about fiction in one place. And again, like I really love Fu's writing and perspective. It felt fresh and contemporary.
And I just enjoyed the entire reading experience. So again, that's Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu. The next book I want to talk about, I was actually writing about in...
¶ Friday Black's Powerful Social Commentary
our newsletter in reading color recently, and it's by another great author. So Friday Black. is a collection of short stories by Nana Kwame Ajaybrenya, which I know a lot of people probably know from Chain Gang All-Stars. But this short story collection... was really propulsive for Ajay Brenya's career. I mean... He became one of the National Book Foundation's five under 35 honorees. And it won awards. It was a bestseller. But I think that especially for people who first heard.
of this author through chain gang all-stars i just want to encourage people to go back in ajay brenya's catalog and pick up friday black because i think this might be like one of my all-time favorite short story collections. And it is a super rare one in that there is not a story that I felt was weak in this collection. Um, and you know, not even like sort of weak, all of these stories were so strong and it makes so much sense that this won so many awards and was so widely read, but.
If you haven't read it, you are in for a treat. Because this is another one that has 12 stories. That must be like a standard thing for short story collections. It feels like a perfect number in my opinion. And these stories touch on some really big, meaty... dark themes. So racism, gun violence, school bullying. We've got zombie stories that do the George Romero thing about consumerism. And this one does have a few stories that are linked. They're set in a mall. And so this like sort of.
romero zombie consumerism event happens at this mall and there's this you know salesman who's really great at his job and his co-workers are facing Black Friday, hence the titular story. And it really does take the zombie story to a different level. It's like brutal and gruesome and horrifying, but it also feels like, yeah, this is a standard Black Friday.
anywhere in America and the stories in this in this collection do that like they make you feel like even though they're speculative there's so much truth to them there's so much of our own reality in them which is something ajay brenya did really well in changing all stars as well that it doesn't feel that far removed from our reality. It's really easy to see how they fit into our world today and into timely issues we're dealing with right now, especially right now.
This is a either great or difficult read, I think, for our times. But it is well worth it. It gets you thinking. It gets you, you know, questioning.
what has become the norm in our world, racism in particular, and how that is... exhibited in people there's this story about um a basically an amusement park an entertainment feature where white people get to act out their aggressions on people of color and it's really horrifying and a lot of this is like satire so there's like dark humor in some of these stories and especially in
the narrators but you know it does deal with some terrifying horrible things there are a lot of really tough uh there's a lot of tough subject matter in these stories violence against children and self-harm so do know that when you're going in I think you've probably already guessed by now that this is a difficult read. It's not like necessarily when you want to get cozy and read something comforting, but it is a super powerful, moving, compelling.
collection it has Ajay Brenya's particular sense of humor gallows humor dark humor and it really shines in some of these stories and they're very inventive And the ending story is just like perfect. Like the way this collection closes, I don't often think about.
You know, I think about the first story in a collection because it needs to grab me, but I don't often think about how a short story collection ends because by then I'm just sort of, you know, experiencing things. But the way this collection ended... Like it just wrapped up the book so perfectly for me. And I, it just stayed with me. It stayed with me since I read it. So please do read it if you haven't already.
It's a great book. It is a timely book forever and ever, unfortunately. Again, that's Friday Black by Nana Kwame Ajay Brenya. And that's it for my recommendations today. I hope you enjoy some great reads this season.
and some great short story collections in your near future. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to our audio editor, Caitlin Brame, and our sponsors for making the show possible. You can find more recommendations and general bookishness at bookriot.com and don't forget to check out our full catalog of podcasts at bookriot.com slash listen or you can just search book riot on your podcast player of choice
We would also love it if you leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen. It really does help other book nerds find the show. And you can find me in between shows on Instagram at SZainabWilliams. That's SZainabWilliams. and AB Williams. And I'll talk to you next time. Happy reading.