re:mote voices

Another month of short story reading, feels as though on some level I'm deliberately reading more shorts because I'm tracking what I'm reading. But I always do go through phases - I've been picking at a couple of year's best anthologies, and not necessarily most recent editions thereof. And been listening to more fiction podcasts. Ideally I would provide links and comments each month to provide context and back to what this list is. This month I've managed to link to the story, or author/book story was from. I had intended to go back and do last month's list and report with this list, but it is time consuming to put all this together.

Lot of good stories, a lot of fine stories, some average. Which is why it would be nice to share more opinion/response - though as always YMMV and tastes are individual. The most I've managed is to mark the stories I particularly enjoyed and particularly recommend reading with a "@" and as with last month where a story just didn't click with me to the point I gave up reading it I've marked "(x)".