I dropped my Kindle in water a few months ago and picked up a new Kobo to replace it. Pretty happy with it (and it's supposedly waterproof too) although the plastic does feel cheap sometimes. The ability to add books via drag-and-drop (like a regular USB drive) is super helpful. Otherwise I also recommend using Calibre for book management.
I bought an off-brand eink reader (there are a number of them, but I got a Boyue Likebook and run KOReader on it) and load Project Gutenberg books through Calibre.
Update: uh, just saw it's so short.