Farewell, Booknotes!

For years now, the only television show I've reliably tuned into nearly every week has been Booknotes. C-SPAN's series of hour-long interviews with non-fiction authors has been a treasure trove of diverse information and insights on history and public affairs that I have long valued.

The show, which has been a cornerstone of C-SPAN programming for fifteen-and-a-half years, will be passing from the scene in December. Brian Lamb, host and C-SPAN's CEO, has understandably decided to no longer do the show. According to a C-SPAN press release, Lamb has averaged spending about twenty hours each week all these years reading and preparing notes for every broadcast. That's a lot of time and Lamb simply needs to free himself for other pursuits.

But I'm going to miss Booknotes a lot. Lamb's interview style is as sparse and no-frills as the set on which the program is taped. He's really like no other journalist on TV today. Through his style, he manages to give a sense of what a book is about, allowing the authors the freedom to present themselves unfiltered by interviewer biases.

While C-SPAN is going to offer other interview programs and interviews with authors using different inquisitors, the loss of Booknotes will, for a time, leave a void.

In any case, thanks a lot to Brian Lamb for fifteen-and-a-half great years!