Dear Santa: Please Don’t Send Me An E-Reader!

       When I was a child I would sit on Santa’s lap and ask him to bring me toys.  Hula hoops, electric football games, Slinkys, guns with greenie stick ‘em caps, roller skates.  Long before Toys R Us, it was Toys R Me.   

       But now my grown-up Christmas wish list is comprised of books.  Paperback books in my stocking, hardbacks under the tree.

       Each holiday season, shortly after Thanksgiving, I tell my wife what books I want Santa to bring me for Christmas.  And whether I have been naughty or nice, Santa usually comes through for me.  I think it’s because he really likes my wife. 

       My Christmas wish list this year includes Edmund Morris’ Colonel Roosevelt (Vol. III of his wonderful biography of “TR”), and Jane Leavey’s The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood.  The latter will give me a chance to relive Christmas 1958 when, at my request, Santa brought me an official Mickey Mantle baseball glove.   

       My list does not include Justin Bieber’s autobiography (how can a 12 year old write an autobiography?), The Official Glee Sing-Along Songbook, or Sarah Palin’s How to Club a Halibut Just for the Halibut! 

       But as much as I love books, I am afraid that on Christmas Eve Santa will come down my chimney and deliver not 3 or 4 books, but hundreds of them.  Maybe even thousands.  And as much as I love to read, it’s a gift I don’t want. 

       Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and I’m afraid that this year he may bring me an e-reader. 

       An e-reader is “wireless reading device” that enables one to get access to a book (well, actually an e-book) in seconds.  And not just one book, thousands of them.  The e-ad for “Kindle”, the e-reader at Amazon.com, claims that with Kindle, a voracious reader can get access to over 750,000 books currently in print, and “over 1.8 million out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books.”  That’s right, fellow e-reader.  In seconds, you and I can e-access the Dead Sea Scrolls or the original, unedited Magna Carta. 

       Barnes & Noble claims its e-reader, “Nook”, offers over 2 million books, magazines, and newspapers “a single search away!”  Yes, you can download War and Peace in seconds, although it will still take you 20 years to read it.  

       Now you would think that for an old codger like me who loves to read, an e-reader would be at the top of my Christmas wish list.  After all, what could be more exciting than to have the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and your favorite local bookstore all in the palm of your hand?  Just think!  You can have instant e-access to Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, and Justin Bieber! 

       Well, thanks, Santa, but no thanks!  I just like the feel of a hardbound or paperback book in my hands.  I like to underline passages and dog-ear the pages when I pause my holiday reading to watch ESPN’s broadcast of the Weed Eater Chick Filet Independence Freedom Bowl between the Northeastern South Dakota Anteaters and the University of California at Los Angeles at Kansas City Fighting Chipmunks.   

       I realize that I am contradicting myself, as this is, after all, an e-column.  If I truly was a paper purest, I would type this column on a manual typewriter on bond writing paper, and then have the printed pages delivered to you by an agent of the United States government, otherwise known as a postal worker. 

       But we curmudgeons are consistently inconsistent.  While I am a born-again blogger, I prefer fountain pens, paper stationary, and three dimensional newspapers you can wrap a fish in.  And on Christmas morning, I like real books, preferably with a nice hand-written note on the title page that says something like “To Dad, with love from his children, Christmas 2010!” 

       Besides, if I get an e-reader for Christmas, neither Santa nor my wife or children will ever give me another book for Christmas again.  I will already have access to every book published since the invention of the Guttenberg press! 

       So, dear Santa, I admit I have not been a good boy this year, but please don’t punish me by putting an e-reader in my stocking.