Browsing for books is my second-favourite pursuit, just below reading them. In Bulgaria, understandably, it is no easy task.

First, and this will shape what you read below, I read very little fiction; my tastes are towards history, political studies, travel and even economics – generally, the lighter and darker shades of non-fiction, not to forget collections of journalism by the likes of the immortal Bernard Levin.

Second, much of the canon by authors of various nationalities and vintage deemed to be "Classics" passed under my gaze before university, and most the rest before I left it. This means that most of those mustard- or blue-spined volumes that stand in cut-price array in the English-language sections of Bulgarian bookshops do not interest me.

But lately, for a number of reasons –  principally the need to find suitable English-language children’s books for our seven-year-old daughter – I have visited a few of the major bookshops in Sofia, and thought I would pass on a few notes.

Yes, if you want Clive Cussler, Agatha Christie, Sidney Sheldon, Stephen Fry in America, Sebastian Faulks’s Devil May Care – the latest non-Fleming attempt at a 007 novel, and Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, no major chain bookshop in Sofia or other major cities in Bulgaria will leave you wanting. There are orderly platoons of collected Paulo Coelhos and Umberto Ecos, too. Read them.

A visit to Helikon in Vitosha Boulevard furnished our daughter with more than half-a-dozen new books in Bulgarian. By the way, I have long since learnt not to confine my searching to the "English-language" section because these may be found in Bulgarian-language categories such as history and religion. Largely frustrated, all that mildly amused me is that Helikon’s religion category has a sub-category "other monotheistic religions" where, below Christian works, one sees Talmud and the Koran.

I assume that the sparse representation of Judaism and Islam (again, "other monotheistic religions") is in line with the chain’s assessment of market demand. The hunt for a Children’s Bible, in English, proved elusive. If anyone knows how to achieve this without putting my bank card details somewhere online, please write in. All other tips are also welcome.

The third floor of the Orange Centre in Graf Ignatiev Street was a much more heartening experience. At the time, I did not know that its materials represent the work of Knigomania. "Our partners are Harper Collins, Penguin, Oxford, Random house, Elsevier, h.f. Ullmann, Thames & Hudson, Phaidon and many others," Knigomania boasts, and I tend to look upon them with favour after my visit a week ago left me in the unaccustomed position of choosing two out of three possible purchases (I am budget-minded).

Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue lost out, because I have read it before and even though I have been trying to rebuild my collection of Brysons after all were lost in shipping them to Bulgaria, to Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World and Ina Abrams’s What It Means To be Jewish: The Voices of our Heritage.

To Mall of Sofia today, with a visit to the Knigomania there, which I know from Festive Season shopping visits and now prefer to peering at the coffee-table-and-Kama-Sutra selection at Slaveikov Square.

Short of time, nothing new for me, although our daughter now has Hansel and Gretel, the Penguin edition in English to match her Bulgarian-language version of the same, and a copy of Read Me a Story (published by Armadillo), strangely costing only 11 leva despite having a marked price of 11 pounds sterling.

Major chains such as Helikon and Knigomania have websites and lists of addresses of places to buy books in Sofia are available through a simple Google search; but in all, I may soon become less of a Luddite and take a closer interest in the fact that Kindle is becoming available in Bulgaria.