The 72-year-old actor David Carradine was discovered dead today, apparently by suicide. While best-known for his role in the Kung Fu TV show and as the ultimate bad guy in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films, he was also an author and reader.

Carradine wrote a number of books, including the Hollywood memoir, "Endless Highway," "Kill Bill Diary," and "David Carradine's Introduction to Chi Kung." In addition, he lent his voice to the audiobook versions of John Twelve Hawks' "The Traveler."

Here's a fitting tribute to his career from the "Endless Highway" book jacket: "Spontaneity, quick-wittedness, and ingenuousness were his guideposts in life, and he quickly learned that creativity was survival. The fifties found him in San Francisco among the original members that spawned the Beat Generation, and his path through the drug-flooded sixties and seventies ultimately led him to "Kung Fu," the show that helped launch an Eastern spiritual philosophy into Western culture."