Pizzas vs. ebooks. An interesting comparison. On the one hand, food is a necessity and pizza is a basic food group. <g> Books somewhat less "necessary" but almost as important as food to some folks.
I would say that it is an especially good comparison to recreational ebooks since pizza is a kinda frivolous "recreational" food. The prices being similar adds to the similarity.
So could we do w/o pizza? Sure. Do we want to? Probably not.
Of course, buying the reader is kinda like buying a
specialty pizza oven (and you thought the Kindle was spendy <g>) to make the pizzas. Whether or not you think that is worthwhile depends both on how much money you have to spend and how much you like pizza!