Wut, wait... The Fire IS an eReader (really, that's its primary function). It's not the best tablet PC out there, but when we got ours (have 2), it was about the cheapest, and it automatically ties into your Kindle account. That was a plus here; we must have 100-150 books on Kindle now and they're all shareable between the devices.
It's a hobbled Android device with no camera and no cell connectivity (obviously, no phone), but works quite well for what it is. Runs apps (just not from Android Market), surfs the web (but forget using it to reply on Ham Island). So yeah, hobbled a bit.
That said, I'd probably look around (again) if I was in the market today. A lot of price drops in the tablet market, and any of these will play eReader. When I get a chance, I want to dig into hacking mine into a true Android tablet. I hear it's been done. Out of the box, Amazon controls the Fire and it seems like a lot of cool Android stuff just isn't available for the Fire because of this.