After being amazed by its e-paper display, the next thing I had to notice, out of necessity, was the user interface. (If I didn’t want to gaze forever at the same page in the same book, that is.) Its interface is unexpected but good, with one persistent annoyance.

With the proliferation of touch screens in devices like the iPhone or automobile GPS receivers, I was tempted to assume that the Kindle’s screen is touch-sensitive and to try and touch it. But the Kindle’s screen isn’t touch-sensitive at all, neither to fingers nor to any sort of stylus like a Palm. Instead, the only screen-related control is a single vertical bar on the right with a silver indicator, controlled by a tiny roller at the bottom which behaves like a mouse wheel. This means that its GUI is line-oriented. Lines with a link or menu are indicated by a short vertical bar on the display which you match with the side indicator by rolling the wheel, then pressing the wheel to select. If a menu comes up, all of its choices are displayed vertically with the same vertical marks.

That GUI and its little indicator feel like technology from a parallel universe. The indicator looks like a sunken grid of chrome squares in a white trough. I think it’s an LCD with unusual coloring, where the background is silver and the foreground is white. When I move the roller quickly, the edge effects seem to support this idea: the indicator’s trailing edge seems to “fill in” with white. I’d have to use a high-speed camera to be sure, though.

The rest of the interface is comprised of two physical switches on the back, four big buttons around the edge, and a little two-thumb keyboard at the bottom. The switches and the keyboard are designed just right, in my opinion. One switch is for main power, and the other is for power to the wireless transceiver. They are simple, easy to move switches with obvious labeling. The keyboard is QUERTY and is adequate to its task. It’s easy to be forgiving about the keyboard in any case because I don’t do a lot of typing on the Kindle; usually just some search terms. The big buttons are the main part of the interface, the part I end up using the most.

They are: next-page, previous-page, another next-page, and a back button, which works like the back button of a browser. The next-page and previous-page buttons on the left are fine. The back button is a small square on the right, easy to find but not easy to hit by accident, which is good. The problematic one is the next-page button above it on the right, which extends almost the entire length of the Kindle. Since next-page is far and away the most commonly pressed button on an electronic book, it makes sense to have it be a large and easy to press button, analogous to the space bar on a keyboard. The only problem with the arrangement is that between all these buttons, there is almost no way to handle the Kindle without pressing one of them.

In fact, after some experimentation, it turns out that there is only one workable way to hold it. Like driving a car, you don’t really get to choose your pose. There is a small vertical space between the bottom of the main display and the keyboard where you can put your thumbs. With your thumbs in place in their designated area, your fingers can arch around the buttons on the side without touching them and hold it from the back. This isn’t as uncomfortable as it sounds; it’s not a matter of physical strain but more of a feeling of delicacy. (There tends to be only one way to hold a champagne flute, too.)

Amazon does provide a very nice cover for the Kindle, which protects it, makes it look more like a real book when closed, and also allows for a few more ways to hold it. They even have a diagram showing the recommended way of folding and holding the cover, which is nice, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been brave enough to bend the front cover all the way back as they illustrate. When used with the cover, the Kindle feels much more like a real book and the big next-page button on the right is not quite as hair-trigger, because my hand is on the cover and not touching the Kindle itself.

After a couple of weeks of use, it feels natural, despite its uniqueness. Most of the gadgets I run into, even the innovative and inspired, are small evolutionary steps from previous gadgets. From the display to the silver indicator to the purely vertical GUI, the Kindle feels instead like a hopeful monster—and it has good reason to hope. I’m starting to forget how I managed without it.