Amazon, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that Kindle devices released in 2012 and earlier have had enough of working a bit too well for their age. These sturdy reading companions—the sort that could survive Armageddon—are to be put out to pasture effective May 20.The devices still in full possession of their faculties that have been handed redundancy notices include the Kindle Keyboard, Kindle Touch, Kindle 4 and 5, and the first-generation Kindle Paperwhite, among others. The notice itself is warmly worded, but that has done little to comfort readers for whom these devices were ride-or-die companions through the thick and thin of life—the book read and re-read hundreds of times, never fraying or falling apart.Books already downloaded may still be read, but no new ones may be purchased, borrowed, or downloaded. And should you deregister or reset the device, you will not be able to re-register it. The library, in other words, is bricked. One either buys a new Kindle or risks losing it entirely.In memoriam A stark reminder that digital ownership is an illusion; our Kindles may belong to us, but only until the terms change.As I read disgruntled users reminiscing about how their Kindle had been passed down from a grandparent, or was the first gift from a spouse, I look at my own Kindle Paperwhite, bought in 2018 with my first salary and the starry-eyed conviction that I would conquer my Everest-high TBR list in no time. Now, jaded and juggling subscriptions, I find myself imagining the object’s wake: black devices laid neatly on a silk tabletop, flowers heaped nearby, the largest wreath from Amazon with a condolence card offering 20 per cent off. Teary whispers of, “they don’t make them like that anymore.”The mourners, in my imagination, are those venting on social media. There is the man who owned four Kindles across 17 years and wants you to know the transition to e-readers was, on balance, good for his back. There is the woman who read Middlemarch twice and is unsure whether she is grieving the device or the version of herself who had the time and fortitude to read it not once, but twice. And there is the person—immediately recognisable as a kindred spirit—who had 473 books in their library, of which they read 150, and who feels the loss most keenly. Not for the unread books, but for the idea of themselves as someone who might get to them someday.In the kitchen, inevitably, there is a man stuffing forkfuls of lasagna into his mouth while evangelising about what he considers the greatest discovery since paper: Calibre.For the uninitiated, Calibre is free software that manages e-books outside Amazon’s ecosystem. The Calibre man has the expression of someone who has been right for 15 years and has finally been vindicated. Nobody can stand him. Everyone wishes he would leave.Story continues below this adAlso Read | The critic is dead. What comes after might be worseLimited ownershipThe rest of us knew, of course. This is what nobody will say directly, though everyone is thinking it with great intensity: we knew we did not own the books. We knew that, against better judgment, we had entered a landlord-tenant arrangement with Amazon. But over the years, we hung pictures, repainted the walls, and began to think of the place as home. The terms and conditions said otherwise, in the font size designed to be agreed to rather than read.The Kindle is not even the first landlord to do this. iTunes purchases have vanished, digital film libraries revised, game platforms shuttered mid-save. The Kindle is only the latest chapter in a longer discovery: that digital ownership was always a kind of fiction.Why did we do it then? Because the Kindle understood something important about readers: what we wanted more than books was to be a person who read books. Someone who always had something on the go, who travelled light but read heavily, who carried an inexhaustible portable library. This was the stuff of bibliophiles’ dreams.Now, some tenants in the older flats have received notice to vacate, with 20 per cent off the next tenancy if they sign before June. One customer, quoted by The Register, put it well: “A discount on something you hadn’t wanted to spend on in the first place is a lopsided deal.” Amazon’s response has been to restate that the devices were supported for 14 to 18 years, that technology has moved on, and, well, these things happen.Story continues below this adBut these things do not simply happen; they are decided. Older Kindles were also the affordable ones — the entry point for readers who could not upgrade every few years, for whom this is not an inconvenience but a loss. There is also the small matter of perfectly functional devices now destined for landfill, in a year when Amazon will no doubt publish a sustainability report.As I read the terms and conditions I once ignored, I wonder if my first salary—and subsequent purchases — might have been better spent on a bookshelf.I look down at the Kindle in my hands. Somewhere in its accumulated annotations are traces of a younger version of myself, and I am always surprised by her—sitting in a matchbox-sized room, having one-sided arguments with authors.The Kindle was mine, I had assumed, until the dying light—something that would be pried from my cold, dead hands with Herculean effort.Story continues below this adIt is mine, Amazon has clarified, only for as long as the arrangement remains mutually convenient. It is also, I would argue, a cruel thing to do to a reader who was only trying, with her first salary and optimistic heart, to become a little more formidable.