Plodding Along With Books

Truthfully, I'm not sure I knew that Harper Lee was still alive. But, she peeked out of obscurity to write for O.

Ever since Harper Lee's novel, 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' was published in 1960 and went on to sell 2.5 million copies in its first year and win the Pulitzer Prize, the author has led a low-profile life. Ms. Lee, now 80, has published virtually nothing of significance since then except a 1983 book review. But now she has written something for publication. It is a letter for O, the Oprah Winfrey magazine, about how she became a reader as a child in a rural, Depression-era Alabama town, The Associated Press reported. In the magazine's July 'special summer reading issue,' Ms. Lee recalls becoming a reader before she entered first grade. Older sisters and a brother read to her; her mother read her a story a day; her father read her newspaper articles. 'Then, of course, it was Uncle Wiggily at bedtime,' Ms. Lee writes of the popular old-time children's character, right. She notes that books were scarce in the 1930's in the town, Monroeville, where she still lives part time; and the scarcity of books in a town without movies and parks made them a special treasure. 'Now,' she writes, '75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cellphones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.'