Books are so yesterday–what’s a good name for an electronic reader?

Nicholson Baker, an ace observer of digital culture, has a wonderful “product review” of the Kindle in the August 3rd issue of The New Yorker. Jeff Bezos, whose company, Amazon, as you will remember, used to be all about the printed book, is leading the charge to replace it. Says Bezos, “We think reading is an important enough activity that it deserves a purpose-built device.” Mm-m.

Baker makes a pretty good case that Amazon is better at selling things than making things. At $489, the new Kindle DX is winning a lot of converts, but it’s a pretty klunky device. You pay 80% of the cost of a book, but all you get is a bare bones license to keep the digital imprint on this one device that doesn’t connect to anything. You can’t give a Kindle book away or lend it or sell it. You can’t read a Kindle book on a Sony Reader or half a dozen other devices that are out there. While the Kindle is the best-selling contender to replace the book, it’s far from the only one.

There is the Sony Reader, which seems to have the most satisfying, down-to-earth name of any of these devices.  Then there is the Ectaco jet-Book, which sounds like it would be at home at an ATV rally.  There is the Be Book, which should corner the spiritual and self help market.  And, yes, there is a reader that is actually named the iRex iLiad – sounds like ancient Greece with dinosaurs. It’s right up there with my wife’s Helen of Troy Cool Shot 1600 electric hair dryer.

Rounding out the collection of oddly-named successors to the book, we have the Hanlin V2, which might have been the British response to Werner von Braun. And – who thought this one up? – the Foxit eSlick, which is available wherever condoms are sold.

Now back to the Kindle, which conveys some lovely ideas about maybe little children or starting a fire, but in a very odd package.  Perhaps there’s a disconnect between the warmth of the name and the cold, hard, ugly plastic of the device. Maybe it’s the action of the verb that stops dead in its tracks when it becomes a noun.  Help me. I’m struggling.