In my experience, Amazon’s new Kindle portable book device is a clunky thing — too big to be a paperback and fit in your pocket, too small to offer easy typing and with such small pages on the screen that any halfway speedy reader is constantly flipping to the next page. But Randall Stross in the business pages of The New York Times argues that the Kindle or a similar gizmo is the future of reading. Mostly, it seems, because the thing is wireless and downloading books is easy.

 Here’s a different reason to have faith in the future of the book: They’re the most popular item purchased online.