[TrudyM]

Originally Posted by JP

CFrance. My kindle is also,I believe, one of the original ones. My cover is also leather but it does have a light that runs off of my Kindles' battery. Maybe you have a light too? It is a black looking piece that pulls out on the upper left of the cover. If you don't have a lighted cover I bet you could get a lighted cover if you wanted to. I believe at the time my cover was around $50. Since the light is a led it takes hardly any power to run it. Its' nice because it lights the front of the kindle almost like a room light but isn't so bright as to bother anybody else.

There were 25 different covers for the early kindle made by amazon and others, the first covers did not have a light built in and where still the ones most sold until the one with built in pull out light came out I think in 2010.
I now have the paperwhite as it has a built in side light that you can adjust up and down to help with glare and allows you to read at night. It is not backlit as that defeats the whole purpose of the eink which is better for you eyes if you read for many hours at a time than a backlit computer screen.
It is $119 with advertisments that pop up when you turn it on or $139 without. The one most of you are referring to as the original kindle is the keyboard kindle and is now sold for $69 new. If you want to see what kindle books are like you can download the kindle ap to your computer or Ipad but will have to set up an amazon account which is also free. Check my earlier posts on how to get free Kindle books, there are many on the amazon site ie all of the Jane Austin for instance.