Faulkner's "Light In August"

Well, finally, finally.... Willie got it right with this one. Not only can you read this book and know who the characters are (and their relation to the others) but you can follow the dialogue and know who is saying what on any given page.

"Light In August" is Oprah's book for the month of August. She had a Faulkner triple-play this summer. Hopefully, she will not do the same for next June/July/August. This book is my favorite of the three Faulkner volumes that she chose, and because it's so easy to read, I'm more than half-way through it and I only just started it the other day. The characters are interesting and the story is very dramatic.

Speaking of "Light" ---- we woke up this morning and there was not a drop of electricity coming into the house. I called the electric company on my cell phone (thank goodness I re-charged it yesterday). Even though I was certain that they already knew there was a problem, it still makes you feel better to have called and reported the outage. Makes you feel like you're trying to solve the problem, even though there's nothing you can really do about it. We made sure not to open the freezer... there's too much salmon in there to risk losing any of the coldness.

The Powers That Be at the electric company had the lights back on within an hour and a half, which wasn't bad. We've gone longer than that when transformers have blown out during a severe rainstorm. This was just a simple "line fuse" that affected 27 houses in this area. All the conveniences we take for granted every day... they're not worth a cent if there's no electricity to make them work.

I think I'm on a pool campaign again, even though I said I'd let the matter rest for a while. Once again, we've had such a hot/hot/hot summer, as we do every year. Once again, The Chronicle has been printing beautiful photographs of backyard pools..... and this weekend's pool was truly tropical looking and gorgeous. Sure would look great in our own yard. And it sure would be a lot more useful to us than a backyard filled with grass that has to be watered and mowed and weeded and trimmed.

However, until my husband stops looking at a pool and thinking it's just "an expensive hole in the ground," I guess the grass is going to stay right where it is.