NavList:

Hello David,

You wrote: "Many worthy texts of 18th and 19th century navigators are available in Kindle editions either free or for pennies"

Never spend a penny on any of these! They are always available for "free" if you go to the right place, and almost anything published before 1900 is free from copyright protection in most countries. May I suggest you start your downloading with the index of books that I maintain for NavList here: http://fer3.com/arc/navbooks2.html. Note that you do not have to remember this address. It's directly accessible from the "Resources" menu on the NavList web site. Many other more recent books can de downloaded page-by-page from hathitrust.org (takes a while since they make you wait for five minutes after every twenty pages, but no real problem, and with many tools you can stitch the individual pdf pages into a complete book).

You wrote: "I’m thinking of buying a Kindle."

A 'Kindle' is at least three distinct things:

• The traditional e-ink Kindle displays text nicely and can be used in bright daylight conditions. It's the 21st century's answer to "beach reading". They use almost no power since the page images are static between page turns. You could charge up at home, go to a deserted island for three weeks, and never stop reading. I believe the newer model is called the "Kindle Paperwhite". Alas, there's an issue for reading old pdf documents. Their built-in pdf software "fixes" some speckles and patterns which it determines by algorithm to be errors in the document reproduction process. This can erase characters and especially symbols from navigation documents. Pity! I bought one two years ago and unfortunately had to return it due to this problem.
• The "Kindle Fire" is an entirely different machine. This one is a type of Android tablet with specially packaged software which creates a type of "walled garden" securing the device and its users from some of the unsavory parts of the Internet. Since this is just a standard tablet in terms of hardware, it does not have that beach-reading capability that makes the traditional Kindle so amazing. It also burns batteries at a rate typical for an Android tablet. You'll have to re-charge every day or two if you use it regularly. Like the traditional Kindle, the Kindle Fire provides easy access to the library of Kindle books.
• And then there's the "Virtual Kindle". They don't call it that, but that's what it is. The Kindle app is available for many platforms and lets you read Kindle purchases on any device that suits you. For example, for the few books which I have purchased as Kindle editions, I prefer reading them on my iPad using the Kindle app for the iOS platform. And even if you own one of the hardware Kindle devices above, you can install the Kindle app on another device, and, within some limits, you can keep bookmarks, last read page, etc. synchronized among all of them including these virtual Kindle apps.

If you just want a device that will let you read navigation books on the go, I suggest you get a used or cheap model Android tablet or Android smartphone (mobile service is not needed) and then install a Kindle app on that, along with whatever other apps you enjoy. You can fit more books than you can read in a decade easily on most any recent model tablet or smartphone. When it comes to selecting a specific model, it's good old-fashioned shopping rules: read the reviews, find a good price, and try it on for fit. This last bit is often overlooked by people who are accustomed to buying computers but haven't bought any "pocket tech". You want a reading device that is big enough and bright enough for legible text but small enough so you can hold it comfortably even, for example, when you're shifting about in bed, and maybe, depending on your taste, small enough to take with you when you go out for coffee. And don't rule out the very small tablets, sometimes known by the annoying name "phablets" which fall in size between phones and normal tablets. 

Last advice: start cheap and easy. You can always get a high-end expensive model later if you discover that this is the greatest solution to the problem of reading since the invention of the alphabet. But you never know... Personally, I rarely read books on tablets unless I have no other option. I still fequently buy hard copies (books made of paper!), or I read on my laptop. It's a question of taste, ergonomics, even self-discipline (I'm more likely to finish reading something if I'm sitting up and taking notes).

Frank Reed
Conanicut Island USA