There is a certain type of person for whom becoming a millionaire would mean ordering the immediate construction of a plain, white room on a hill - probably with a single window opening onto a field - built for the express purpose of finally getting some god-damn reading done.
The E-reader is the nearest affordable equivalent of this.
These strange, antiquated-looking devices, with their grayscale screens and thick plastic bezels, are that rare and simple thing: a modern gadget which has evolved to solve just two, simple problems.
First, most screens are terrible for reading. Second, reading is difficult anyway
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And why do they succeed? Because where carrying books is inconvenient, and buying them, doubly so, and where distractions threaten at all times to supersede your attempt to learn what happens next, the E-reader makes all of these problems moot. Unlike an iPad or a phone, with an E-reader you can clearly see words in bright sunlight, the battery lasts for weeks, and perhaps most subtly of all, many people prefer their readers to just do less.
The new Kindle Paperwhite, Amazon's flagship E-reader which comes with a built-in light, and frankly not much else, takes this very much to heart.

Because, if anything, it does even less than any Kindle ever has.
Where various other Kindles since 2007 have had keyboards, page-turning buttons, headphone jacks and expandable memory, the Paperwhite has none. Where other Kindles had bizarre 80s-themed designs, and where the new Kindle Fire HD has a fantastic full-colour screen, the Paperwhite dispenses with these too.