Having gone to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe I thought it might be nice to reread one or two of the other books. However, they’re packed away somewhere (probably in a box in the garage) but I did find the old Harper Collins audiobooks in their children’s line from the late 70s. Now, the problem with these are that they are all massively abridged down to about an hour (I guess to fit them on a single LP, though the ones I have on hand are cassette.) The performances are good (I really liked listening to Claire Bloom read The Magician’s Nephew when I was a kid) but the books are so abridged that a lot of the story, not to mention the humor that is present, is pretty much gone. Curious, I looked at Audible to see if there had been a release of the unabridged at any time and found that the entire set have been released unabridged with different readers. Now, I’ve never been a big fan of audiobooks (mostly because of the time committment–I could probably read the entire series in the time it would take me to listen to a couple of the audiobooks) but I do have a few and the Narnia series are the kind of books that work better when listened to.
So, has anyone heard these new recordings and can make a recommendation one way or the other?