Longest audio book? Seveneves is 96 hours long!

[worm in glove]

Neville Jason's reading of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (published by Naxos Audiobooks) is about 153 hours long.

It will take you lots of commuting to finish but it is worth every minute.

[latepaul]

I feel like a lightweight. My longest listen was Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell at only 32 hours!

[Sweetpea]

My longest book is Gai-Jin with 50 hours and 16 minutes. A good second is the Count of Monte Christo with 50 hours and 5 minutes.

[issybird]

I've been telling myself that this summer, I'd read Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker. Well, now it's summer and the thought of its 66+ hours is rather daunting. I originally thought I'd listen since it's not available as an ebook and talk about weighty tomes! That one could break your wrists. But it's an awful lot of time to spend on one book; reading would be faster.

It was an excellent value for a credit, though.

[Razi]

Originally Posted by worm in glove

Neville Jason's reading of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (published by Naxos Audiobooks) is about 153 hours long.

It will take you lots of commuting to finish but it is worth every minute.

I am listening to this one. On Part 3 now (Guermantes Way). It will finish soon as I am almost half way through. 4 more parts to go after this one. Interesting dog walks!

[Maxxvolume]

The Decline & Fall Of The Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon 126 hours 31 minutes long on Audible

[sun surfer]

This thread reminds me how much I really like Audible's basic policy of one credit regardless of length. If selection were the same, I might prefer a cheaper rental or subscription program like a netflix for audiobooks since I will probably rarely re-listen to a book anytime in the foreseeable future, but if I am paying to buy the books it's so nice not to worry about needing more credits for longer books. If some other company had with a similar model become the dominant audiobook company I could easily see a decision to make customers use more credits as books get longer. Could happen with Audible too at some point but, with Bezos the book-loving and customer-service-oriented CEO still overseeing Amazon, I hope not.

Originally Posted by tomsem

One of the audiobook versions of Les Miserables is 69 hours long. The one I have (and have yet to read) is 60 hours long. And there is one that is only 51 hours long.

I listened to the Naxos recording read by Bill Homewood which clocks in at 67 hours and 52 minutes and is to date my longest audiobook listened to. I see now that it's the second longest recording of Les Mis on Audible, only an hour and a half shorter than the longest. It only cost me one credit.

But then Audible lists an unabridged Russian Edition that is only two and a half hours long. If only my Russian were good enough...

Don't trust it. That's the trouble with these audiobooks of public domain classics- anyone can do an abridgement and slap an 'unabridged' onto it whether by accident or on purpose, so how are we to trust the version we pick is truly unabridged? The one you mentioned is easy to spot but others can be closer in length and more difficult to ascertain.

It is fascinating that there can be so much variation, depending on who is reading. But that is where it becomes essential to be able to adjust the playback speed. I often listen at 2x, depending on the speaker.

I think the Audible app I use now does label the speed correctly but the one I used before didn't. I used to buy from Audible and download to my computer to put the audiobooks on my iTunes and then listen on my iPod Nano (because it wasn't possible to use the Audible app on the Nano). Anyway, whatever iTunes audiobook software I was using on the Nano, if I chose 2x it wasn't actually. I became suspect so I timed it and found it was closer to 1.25x or 1.5x. So on that I used '2x' but on the Audible app 2x is much too fast for me since I'm usually doing other things while listening.

[JSWolf]

Romans: The Greatest Letter Ever Written: Complete Set is 153 hours and 53 minutes long.