If you are stumped on what to get your mother (or grandmother) for Mother's Day, you might want to consider a Kindle
(yes, you can get one delivered by then, with overnight or second day delivery). Chances are, you got your love of reading from one or both of your parents, who read to you when you were young (if you don't like to read, you probably will never see this blog, so that segment of the population can safely be ignored).If you've noticed that your Mother doesn't read as much anymore, it may be due to physical factors that she has to overcome. If she needs larger print, the books are both more expensive and harder to handle. Even those with regular print books find that many are now much larger in size than before, as novels are often many hundreds of pages, while trade paperbacks use both thicker paperstock and a larger than "normal" font size (though not as large as a "large print" book). That added size can be a problem as we age, especially with books that don't lay flat on their own. I've found that although I can read these massive tomes, I really don't like to (and with my Kindle, I no longer have to, for the most part). For those who have significantly deteriorated eyesight, the TTS feature (which still works on practically all Kindle books; in fact, I have yet to see a report of a book where it has actually been disabled, although Random House has said they will do so for their titles) can re-open the door to the worlds locked inside books.
I don't know about your parents, but I do know mine won't be learning braille in their 90's, just so they can get access to a restricted set of published works. I do know that my mother-in-law (who is in her 90's) is exactly the type that these features are designed for. She can still see (with extra light and a magnifying glass) enough to work the menu, but no longer well enough to read even large print books. TTS isn't perfect, but it does work and it works with anything in the Kindle store and at no extra cost, not just on a few, higher priced selections that might sell in large enough quantities to pay off for publishers. The only reason I haven't purchased a Kindle for her -- she lives in a remote area with no Whispernet and doesn't have a computer or access to get books any other way (yes, these areas still exist, in the northern mid-west, especially when you get into towns of pop. 300 or less). Since she no longer drives (and it's a two-day drive to get there for us), the only way a Kindle would work well would be to preload the books (keeping her on my account, plus loading it up with some free classics) and either fly up for a visit when she needs a refill (we could drive to a Whispernet area in about an hour or two or just use my netbook to hook up and download them from Amazon) or just ship it back and forth between us, which would let me restock it with fresh titles in only about a week's turn-around time and at very little cost.
My mother, on the other hand, already has a Kindle (the original version) and we now have four Kindles in the family (Dad got the K2, since the buttons are less prone to be accidentally pressed). Otherwise, I'd be all set in what I was getting her this year. My second choice would be a Wii
game (seriously, after the Kindle and the computer, this occupies her free time much more than television). The biggest problem, though, is that the one title coming out that I think she would really like (EA Sports Active
) won't be out until May 19 (that and she is likely to have already ordered it herself). She already has (and uses) My Fitness Coach
, Active Life Outdoor Challenge
, Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party
(I and my nieces beat my brother soundly on this one when he came to visit last month), Dance Dance Revolution
and she recently mentioned she was ordering both We Ski and Snowboard
and Shaun White Snowboarding
(no, she isn't Supermom, although I like to think so).Like the Kindle, she didn't think she wanted a Wii
when they came out, but I talked her into it. When Mario Kart Wii
came out, we went to a midnight sales event (Sam's Club - no one thinks to go there and we had no problems getting one). The Wii Fit
(with the balance board) was pre-ordered the day it was available at Amazon (good thing, as they sold out nearly immediately and stayed that way for a long time). She is past retirement age and not only enjoys many of the games, she finds that they are good exercise (except for the boxing, which tends to make her upper back ache), especially the ones that use the balance board. She also avoids some of the titles geared towards the very active younger set (cheerleader games, for example) and has a few that just don't work well (Jillian Michaels Fitness
, for example, which I can't make recognize the controls, either, and strongly recommend you avoid). The cool thing about EA Sports Active, though, is that not only is it not organized around a single exercise (Gold's Gym Cardio Workout
should be called Cardio Boxing Workout), but looks like it will be able to download additional content
later on. More exercises will mean that the "game" will be less likely to get boring, resulting in abandoning her (or your) workouts (not that she'll quit the WII - last I heard, she had caught every single fish in Fishing Master
and was starting on Fishing Master World Tour
; too bad we can't get her to enter one of the local bass tournaments and win us all a new boat).I'd just get flowers and a card, but she's already said "no flowers" this year. So, what do you think? Should I just get her a gift certificate? Or something else? Leave me a comment with your suggestion and next week I'll draw a name at random to receive a (hardback) copy of A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy
.Mom - I know you are reading this! You are not eligible (besides, you can read my other copy just as soon as I get thru it). Happy Mother's Day!
By the way, that picture on the beach? Not my mom, obviously. She'd be out swimming in the ocean and save reading for inside, when it rained in the afternoon.
