Sounds like you really want an I-Pad! Yes, you can download 'other' books to your kindle but you may need to run them through a free conversion software like calibre first since Kindle is proprierity. You can also download .pdf files to it, but sometimes they don't come through in a format you can read. Kindle does read all .pub files and there are thousands to choose from. With prices dropping on e-readers and so many free books, it's not a bad deal.