I've recently spent some time setting up Home Assistant [0] to corral the many smart devices in my home. In addition to the many IoT device control capabilities, HA has a rich integration/add-on ecosystem, and can pull in all sorts of additional data about daily life (financial feeds, weather, etc).
The missing piece for me right now is a device that acts as a control hub.
I hadn't considered using a Kindle, but now I'm excited about the possibilities. If I can use Life Dashboard to receive status information from HA (and possibly even send commands to devices), this might be the solution to that final missing piece.