[Mike L]

On the Letters page of PC World magazine (July 2009, p. 7), a reader describes how he returned his Kindle 2. The reason: "the small number of titles available".

He writes: "Kindle has 245,000 titles, which sounds like a lot. But Amazon currently have over 26 million real books for sale. .... Unless you only read best sellers (and relatively recent one) or classics, you will need to continue dragging books around."

That sounded extraordinary to me. Leaving aside whether that figure of 26 million could possibly be correct (are there really that many books in print at any one time?), I would have thought 245,000 electronic titles would provide enough choice for the most avid of readers.

For a little experiment (not at all scientific), I listed the ten last printed books I read (before I decided to buy an electronic reader), and then checked their Kindle availability.

For what it's worth, here are my results:

Available in print and for Kindle:

Echo Park (Michael Connelly)

Split Images (Elmore Leonard)

The Last Tycoon (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

How to do everything with your iPod & iTunes (Guy Hart-Davis)

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer (James Swanson)

Complete Brigadier Gerard (Arthur Conan Doyle)

Battle Cry of Freedom (James M. McPherson)

Available in print but not for Kindle

Cole Porter (William McBrien)

Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart (John Guy)

So, 80 percent of my personal sample are available for the Kindle. I wonder what books the letter-writer reads that are only available in print.

It would be interesting to see if anyone else's listing are in line with my results.