There’s a stack of e-readers sitting on the coffee table in my apartment. From bottom to top: A broken Nook, an old Kindle Touch, a first-generation Kindle Paperwhite and, as of this week, a review unit of the Kindle Voyage — Amazon’s latest e-reader, which starts at a whopping $199.

I read about two books a week, but the e-readers don’t get a lot of love around here. When I went to turn on the Kindle Touch and Kindle Paperwhite to compare them to the Kindle Voyage, I discovered that both had run out of battery at some point, and I had to recharge them. The broken Nook belonged to my husband, and when it finally stopped working he decided to start reading on his iPad instead of upgrading to one of the other e-readers we already owned.

Sad stack o’ readers. Photo by Laura Owen

This isn’t about…