James Meek

speaker

486 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 15 Jun

James Meek’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

London Review Bookshop Podcast · James Meek & Lara Pawson: Your Life Without Me · 15 Jun 2026 podcast

I mean, in a way it's remarkable how little

I do learn.

I mean, I must learn a lot every time I do this, because every time you write a novel, it's a massive project.

So you must learn a lot.

And yet it's quite hard to put your finger on quite what it is, because it's not like some sort of complicated procedure, like flying a plane or doing a heart operation.

It's not like, OK, this is the third or fourth time I know my way around this now.

So I don't really understand, as a writer, the difference between those two things.

The fact that you know objectively you must have learned a lot each time you do it.

And the fact that it never seems to get any easier.

But that wasn't what you meant.

Yes, yes.

Absolutely.

I mean, of course, if you are reading it, then you you tend to be, you know, if the person who wrote it is reading it, I think they tend to be on the lookout for the little flaws, you know.

If you imagine somebody who's a shipbuilder, then everyone else will see the ship that floats and it works.

But the shipbuilder is like, he knows that little place there just where the two boards weren't quite fitting together well.

And maybe that's a shame because, you know, it does spoil your enjoyment of your own book.

I mean, sometimes, rarely, very rarely, I will pick up a book that I've written several years before and I'll start reading it and I'll see how far I get before I find that niggle.

But yeah, I mean, the last one now, it's like years have passed.

I enjoyed the last one.

I enjoyed the last time I started reading the last one.

Showing 461–480 of 486 · page 24 of 25