Tagged: John Grisham

Holdout Grisham bows to eBook trend

John Grisham, whose legal thrillers are a staple of traditional book stores, has finally relented and made his entire backlist of 23 novels available in eBook format. That means owners of Amazon Kindles and Sony eReaders will now be able to acquire Grisham’s titles in electronic format.

While the move was inevitable, Grisham held out longer than most because of his love for traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores. Does this mean print is dead? No, but much like the music business’s transition from vinyl to CD to MP3 formats, how those books are delivered to consumers is undergoing a sea-change transition.

Print books will never go away; they’re as entrenched as a list of the best acne treatments, but there will be growing pains, certainly, as consumers move to eDelivery of the latest works from their favorite authors, rather than hanging out at the local Borders.

Renfro, 25, found dead in LA home

The days of giving and receiving Valentines Day gifts are over far too soon for 25-year-old actor Brad Renfro. Renfro was found dead in his Los Angeles County home on Tuesday, January 15, 2008. The cause of death has not yet been determined, but an autopsy could be conducted as early as Wednesday.

Renfro’s biggest role was his first, cast at the age of 10 in Joel Schumacher’s adaptation of the John Grisham novel, The Client, which starred Susan Sarandon as a lawyer who takes on a case for the 10-year-old client played by Renfro. His early success led to a role a year later in Tom and Huck, a retelling of two of Mark Twain’s most famous American novels.

However, while the movie roles kept rolling in, Renfro’s career kept getting more obscure as the level and quality of the movies in which he was cast declined. His career enjoyed a brief upswing in 2001, when he appeared in the indy movie, Ghost World. However, although he was able to keep working, none of the roles that followed were as well-received.

At the time of his death, he was involved in two movies that were incomplete; The Informers and Joe the Engineer. It is not known at this time whether his performances will be integrated into the final cuts of those films, or if his death will spur directors to recast his roles in those films, and reshoot completed scenes.

The actor allegedly struggled with drugs and alcohol, but media sources are quoting his lawyer, Richard Kaplan, as saying Renfro was working hard in recent months to stay clean.

A moment of silence, please.