Edit: In the original version of this post, I called this a Kindle 3. Brain fart. Sorry about that!

My parents kindly bought me a Kindle 4 for Christmas. It’s the new, small, light one. No touch, no 3G. Simple.

I love it for many reasons, but have struggled to turn pages comfortably. My thumb just wasn’t able to press the side buttons easily. (Ah, First World Problems.)

Today, I realized why I was struggling: The Kindle is designed for women’s hands.1 And those hands are typically smaller than a man’s.

Then my mind leaped to a memory: while checking out the Kindle’s orientation options, I saw an upside-downmode . I’d wondered at the time, Why would anyone want to use a Kindle upside-down ? The answer was now obvious.

I set the Kindle to upside-downmode . Voila! I can now turn pages with complete ease. Success!

1 (Do you think my assertion that the Kindle’s “designed for women” is crazy? Go to the Kindle product page. Every person shown on the page–even the disembodied hands–are female. Who do you think they’re advertising to?)