Random Readings

I read a couple of stories on the way to other things, so am going to go ahead and react to them here.  John Kessel's The Baum Plan for Financial Independence is the title story in the collection.  It is a nicely set story, with some reasonable characterization, but I can't say it is really all that special, just a pot of gold story.  Wicked is a very short filler piece in Maureen McHugh's Mothers and Other Monsters collection.  I never quite know how to react to these in writing.  Reminds me of the ending of The Neighbors with John Belushi.