It seemed like a great idea for a blog post: introduce my Dad to my Kindle while he’s in town visiting, and record his reaction.  He’s 73, he’s the world’s most voracious reader—can he adapt?  This will be fascinating insight into the digital adaptability of older readers and marketability of ebooks to this rapidly expanding segment of the population, I thought.

After dinner, I threw out the idea.  “Sure!  You don’t have to videotape me, do you?” he asked.  I told him no, that I might just have to take some notes as I showed him the features to record his reactions.  “Great, these darn things are amazing, the way you describe them.”

But it seemed after dinner was not the time.   He was tired, he’d had some wine…  “But first thing tomorrow morning, let’s do it.”

“Do you mind if I just read the paper, actually?” was his answer over morning coffee.  Understandable—he was jet lagged and recovering from a long week of babysitting his firecracker of a two-year-old granddaughter—so I let him be and bothered him a couple of hours later, before lunch.  “I’m starving—let’s get hummus and do it later?”

Well, I took the hint.  He’s happy with his paper format.  He doesn’t see what an eBook can do better.  He enjoys going to the bookstore and browsing.  He likes marking up margins with pithy comments our family will be enjoying for decades (including his shorthand for “this is stupid or in some other way remarkable”, simply “!”).  He likes that you can simply turn a page instead of having to find the right button.  I’m pretty sure he also likes having books to line his shelves, intimidating all those who enter the home office.

Does he know that with my Kindle, a book he’s paying upwards of $30.00 for would cost only $9.99?  Does he know that he could get instant access to whatever title he’s fancying and spare himself a trip to the bookstore or a wait for that Amazon package?  Does he know that he could adjust the font size to his comfort?  Does he know that he could borrow and loan titles to friends in a flash?  Does he know that he could search any word or phrase in the book and instantly locate the funny part he wanted to show my mother?  Does he know that when his eyes become strained, he could close them and have the Kindle read the book out loud to him?  All of this on my bare bones model—I don’t even have a Kindle Fire yet, nor am I aware of the other amazing eReaders out there with marvelous features of their own—the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Reader, the Kobo Wireless eReader, the Pandigital Novel, the BeBook Neo, etc.

I’m going to make an impassioned case citing all of these upsides to the digital realm the next time he visits and hope it intrigues him to overcome his block and give eReaders serious consideration.  Or with prices down around $79, maybe I’ll just get him one for Christmas and see what happens!