Once again I've gotten anthologies with multiple items in them. One of them is a volume with four of Jane Austen's novels (all but Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey and another is all of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories from The Strand Magazine, with the original illustrations by Sidney Paget. I've been intending not to buy things that are in the public domain and thus available in digital form on the Internet, but these two particular volumes just seemed like such a good deal that I couldn't resist. Plus one of them is full of English people murdering one another, and how could I resist that?
A third hardback is also crime-related, being an anthology of short stories and four novels chosen by American detective novelist Ross Macdonald. I had paperbacks of all of Macdonald's novels, and although this volume includes only one of his works, I trust his judgement and am sure I will like the other things he chose for the book. In fact one of them, Kenneth Fearing's novel The Big Clock is some thing I also had in a paperback version. The other two novels are by Agatha Christie and Dick Francis, and the short stories include works by Graham Greene, Dashiel Hammet, Margaret Millar, John Collier (I had a collection of his stories in paperback, too,) and Flannery O'Connor, so no slouches there.
The last book is a paperback urban history called The Invention of Paris, by Eric Hazan, which was favorably reviewed by Luc Sante, among others, so I'm expecting it to be pretty good too— if I ever get around to it. The books are certainly piling up, and many of them are very thick books. I'm now a bit worried that the cleared shelves of the Goodwill store might be harbingers of some vast influx of new titles, perhaps donated by people clearing space in their houses for the gifts they are expecting for Christmas. If that's the case the temptation will be fierce. Books and records have always been the exceptions to my loathing of shopping. During my long confinement to the mountain backwater I did not have access to bookstores, but I find that the deprivation has not diminished my tendency to grab every printed thing in sight that holds any appeal for me at all. It's a good thing the Goodwill store has such a wretched selection of recorded music and asks comparatively high prices for it, or I'd be piling up a new hoard of recordings as well.
In weather news, the next few days will be hot, but the latest forecast for the next cool day, Monday, not only predicts a high of 72 but also scattered thunderstorms. This is probably related to the big mass of unusually warm water that has accumulated in the north Pacific, since thunderstorms are not a normal part of California's late summer weather pattern. I just hope the lightning doesn't set of a bunch of brush fires. Firefighters are just now getting the three big fires currently burning in the region contained, and we certainly don't need any new ones erupting. Some decent rain would be welcome. Lots of lightning not so much.