Surely anyone reading the Book Nook knows what a Kindle is, right? Well, for those few bibliophiles who are not up to speed on the biggest revolution in publishing since the electric lamp, it’s what the manufacturer, Amazon.com, calls a “wireless reading device.”
  It’s an astonishing piece of technology. You buy a Kindle from Amazon.com for $359, it’s mailed to you, you open the box and in about three minutes you can be reading a book, magazine or newspaper on the device.
  Via this nifty little invention, you go to the Amazon site, find a book you want, order it, your credit card is charged and in a matter of seconds the text of the book has been downloaded into your Kindle.
  Reading on the Kindle is easy and pleasant on the eyes. Amazon’s marketing materials are accurate:
  “Utilizing the latest in electronic-ink display technology, Kindle provides a crisp black-and-white six-inch screen with the same appearance and readability of printed paper. Sharp and natural with no glare or backlight, reading on Kindle is nothing like reading from a computer screen. . . . The screen works using ink, just like books and newspapers, but displays the ink particles electronically. And unlike a laptop or smart phone, Kindle never gets warm, so you can comfortably read as long as you like.”
  The latest version of the Kindle — the practically named Kindle 2 — will hold about 1,500 books, so you’re not likely to run out of reading material. In addition, the Kindle 2 has a long battery life, in part because no power is used to maintain an illuminated screen. Just like a regular book, you need some kind of external light source — you know, the sun or a light bulb — to read on the Kindle.
  The Kindle has several other features, most of which I haven’t played with yet. What I have done, though, is downloaded a story by Stephen King that was written especially and exclusively for the Kindle.
  “UR” is not a novel, or even a novella. It’s more of a longish short story, so the $2.99 price tag seems about right, considering that most books for the Kindle fall in the $7-to-$10 range.
  The story’s premise is classic SK. An English professor at a small college in Kentucky orders a Kindle. He’s ostensibly “old school” and would never dream of buying a “wireless reading device” when he has perfectly good books on his shelves. But he buys it anyway, as a spiteful gesture against his “illiterate” ex-girlfriend.
  But it turns out this professor does not receive a regular, everyday Kindle. Oh no. He receives a Kindle that opens doors never dreamed of by modern computer engineers. This particular Kindle is special, offering the professor a glimpse into the literary output of, say, Ernest Hemingway, in several different alternate universes. In some of these worlds, Hemingway did not kill himself in 1961 but rather went on to write several more novels.
  The story takes a more suspenseful turn when the professor explores another feature of his special Kindle: It will tell you the future. How the professor, a colleague and a student deal with this brain-bending discovery constitutes the narrative arc of the story.
  “UR” is not King’s greatest work by any stretch. But it doesn’t take much clicking of the page-turning buttons to know that the grand master of horror has done Amazon a big favor and not embarrassed himself in the process. Somehow, he came up with a convincing story whose main element is a “wireless reading device.” The story could have come off as a cheap marketing ploy, but instead it fits rather logically into King’s oeuvre.
  Amazon has more than 240,000 books formatted to be read on the Kindle. “UR” is a good place to start, but each Kindle buyer will have to choose the types of books that are best for him. For example, I am now enjoying a nonfiction book about pop music on my Kindle, but I could not imagine using the device to slog through an 800-page epic fantasy novel.
  In case you’re wondering, I have no intention of abandoning the thousands of paper-and-ink books that line the shelves of my home. Nor do I plan to stop going to bookstores to buy more. But the Kindle is a legitimate new way to read a book, magazine or newspaper. The prices for the books and subscriptions are considerably lower than they are for the dead-tree versions, and the reading experience is superior to, say, reading on your cell phone or desktop computer.