Mom (and I, apparently) got an Amazon Kindle for Christmas. Mom quite likes it and has been downloading various things. Her basic plan was to use it for formerly print media such as newspapers and magazines. You can buy issues via the Kindle and have it download in less than a minute. I thought Mom was going to use it for reading during exercise but she hasn’t done that. Instead she uses it to put off going to exercise because she just has to finish the chapter.
It is a nice little object and reading on it is fine. The display is persistent without power. When shipped, the set up instructions are left on the screen instead of using a separate piece of paper. The kindle charges from USB and the shipped version includes an AC to USB converter so either a computer or a standard outlet suffices to recharge.
Mom has found only two downsides. One is the book selection is still a bit limited. Mom has found a number of books she would like to download but are not available. The other is that you can’t transfer books to other people as you can with a physical book. This is an issue for books you only want to read once but if the price is low enough that’s probably not a big problem.