How the Internet Killed a Harper Lee Christmas Tradition
In an ironic bit of timing, the independent bookstore that Lee patronized for many years every Christmas, Capitol Book & News, closed in January after 65 years. Today, via one of those three front-page stories, reporter Kym Klass retraces how Lee would sign copies of To Kill a Mockingbird every Yuletide season to help support the store, and why Lee chose to finally end this annual tradition:
Lee would let the Montgomery bookstore know in advance that she was coming – which she did for many years up until about eight years ago after a stroke made her physically unable to travel from her home in Monroeville – and Thomas Upchurch, a store owner, would order hundreds of copies of and offer a private signing in a back room at the store…
“We kind of inherited her as a customer,” Upchurch said. “And then we became friends with her. When she came to discover that people were putting her signed copies on eBay, she didn’t like it. So she stopped signing books a couple of years before she got sick.”
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