SAN DIEGO — Looking for a good rainy day read? In search of a rare classic or specialty book? Or do you simply enjoy browsing through stacks of out-of-print and hard to find books?

Whatever your literary mission, your best bets for "one-stop shopping" within San Diego County will be one of three spots: Normal Heights, downtown San Diego or El Cajon.

This unlikely threesome represents the hot spots in a countywide bookstore boom. They are the largest clusters of used, out of print, rare and new specialty books for sale within the county.

Normal Heights, a central San Diego neighborhood, has eight bookstores along Adams Avenue between 32nd and 35th streets, with 220,000 to 230,000 books for sale. Add to that the occasional trove of literary treasures you might discover in any of 2 dozen antique shops in Normal Heights.

Downtown San Diego has seven such bookstores, including four within a block of 7th Avenue and Broadway. At 726 Broadway is Wahrenbrock's, said to be the largest new and used bookstore this side of Los Angeles with an estimated 300,000-book inventory.

Wahrenbrock's, which opened in 1935, is truly a book hunter's paradise, with three long, narrow floors jammed with books. Stacks of books are literally pressed into bookshelves. Stacks also line the stairway and many shelves contain double rows of books.

Large subject signs, however, ease the way through the maze of shelves, which feature an impressive variety of soft and hard-bound books. The third floor, often locked, contains rare books that date back to 1460, according to proprietor Chuck Valverde.

A half-block north of Wahrenbrock's at the corner of 8th Avenue and Broadway, Bill Burgett, long-time owner of the Lemon Grove Bookstore, opened William Burgett Bookseller on Jan. 7. The two-level store has about 25,000 titles, with almost half the inventory in paperback. Some shelves were still being stocked last week.

Next door to Burgett is Smith & Co. Booksellers, a small, even more recently opened specialty bookstore. At 632 Broadway is the larger J & J Bookseller.

A block-and-half from J & J is Aardvark Books, 925 6th Ave. It is "more or less an egghead bookstore," said owner Forrest Curo. "You won't find any self-help or sports books here."

If you are into the ancient Oriental game of Go, Aardvark features a large selection of Go books in its inventory of 45,000 books. In fact, a Go club meets there monthly.