It’s funny how being in a nursing home or assisted living place takes people differently. You can be bored or you can be like an elderly cousin of mine. She had to go into a nursing home after a stroke left her unable to walk at 92. She was there for about ten minutes before she rolled her wheelchair to the elevator, rolled two blocks down the street to the offices of a tiny nearby private college, and told them that she was going to commandeer their little radio station to broadcast a 30-minute Bible study every day. And she did. She did not give those kids an alternative. Bless her heart, she must have been a terror when she was young and mobile. She also maintained a voluminous correspondence (written by hand since she did not have a computer despite my efforts to talk her into it).
She kept all of this up until two weeks before she died, at 97, in 2001. She also devoted time to genealogy research and to amiably terrorizing me and other “young” people. And because she was so sharp she did not lack for visitors. I visited her even though it was a three hour drive. This just shows that if you don’t want to be bored you don’t have to be.
My husband is a voracious reader and likes real books, not Kindle so we have lots to give away. Giving them to these places is not an option because the people do not read for the most part. A few seem to be engaged with their laptops but most just sit and stare.