I bought a Nook for my dad for his birthday

Camy here, and I just bought a Nook for my dad for his birthday. I wasn’t entirely sure how that would fly since Dad turned “seventy-mumble” this year. He’s actually rather decent with new technology, but once in a while it will take him a little longer to figure something out than it used to.

But Dad also loves to read novels. (So does my mom, so I got my love of reading from both sides.) I got him into ebooks several years ago when I first discovered that many science fiction books were available as ebooks, and since Dad had a PDA at the time that could read ebooks, he bought several and loaded them onto his PDA to take with him wherever he went, so he could read any time.

However, at one point his PDA battery got drained entirely and when he rebooted it, he found that he was denied permission to read his ebooks, which was security protected. He tried his password but it just wouldn’t work.

I got him a Nook Color for his birthday since it also has lots of apps he can download so he can play games on it. I called him to ask how he’s been liking it, and apparently he’s been reading a lot more now than he had been for the past couple years. He downloaded his favorite author, Alan Dean Foster, and bought the last few Flinx books in the series. Mom says he’s reading on his Nook every night before bed. He also plays a poker machine game app that he downloaded.

Yay! I finally got Dad a present he actually likes! And thank goodness the Nook was a) inexpensive enough that he didn’t feel bad I was spending money on him, and b) easy enough to use that he didn’t have any problems setting it up. Plus now he’ll be able to find and enjoy the science fiction novels he loves. And as he gets older, he’ll be able to increase the font size if he needs to. (Which, er, his daughter already has to do ...)

So would you get a Nook or Kindle for yourself or your parent?



Camy Tang writes romance with a kick of wasabi. Out now is the third book in her Sonoma series, Stalker in the Shadows. She is a staff worker for her church youth group, and leads one of the worship teams for Sunday service. On her blog, she ponders frivolous things like knitting, running, dogs, and Asiana. Visit her website to sign up for her quarterly newsletter.