I have the exact same experience as "gladsteinfr".
Amazon has offered a paltry $20 dollar discount on a reconditioned kindle ( with a fairly comprehensive range of choices). My sister's bought kindles at around the same time and theirs have also died. I have an ipod touch purchased at aroond the same time that is actually my ereader of choice. It is alive and well. I also feel that there is some kind of planned obsolesence.
I was planning ( with great dread) on trying to manually brick as suggested in opening screen of KUBRICK but if the battery is most likely the problem.....
BTW- mine unfreezes with a window of opportunity of about 2 minutes - I went into the files and confirmed that all my books were indeed deleted and ran KUBRICK again. And, I did get the battery indicator to turn green in charger after a couple of days.
And, just as a point of information- I used the technique in this link as a quasi successful initial effort to unfreeze - for my kindle it actually worked as well as the KUBRICK.
http://www.frankcoles.com/journalism.../#.UX4GR9c5udl