What is the best audiobook of all time?
This was the question I was asked by a group of friends I met while shopping for an audiobook collection on an audiobook forum.
Everyone was raving about the best audiobook ever, talking about how wonderful it felt to be entertained by the creativity of the entire series, when I joined them.
Thinking they were going to say that the best book of all time was Harry Potter, I said yes, I had read the best audiobook of all time.
Then when I was asked how much I loved the role played by Arthur Dent, I knew I was completely wrong in thinking that Harry Potter was the best audiobook of all time.
For this group and almost everyone on that particular forum, the best audiobook of all time was none other than “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
Person after person, forum members said a lot of good things about the new third series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which now comes on audio CD, cassette and download with 25 minutes of previously unreleased footage.
He had been a huge fan of the original BBC Radio 4 series, so he knew they had to be right.
What really impressed me was when they said that the author himself, Douglas Adams, played the role of Agrajag.
I immediately went to Amazon and ordered the full six-part skit: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Tertiary Phase.
The plot picked up the exact point where the second radio series ended. Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect had escaped from prehistoric Earth using a time-traveling sofa. At that time, some homicidal robots had blown up Lords Cricket Ground.
Arthur, with only a rabbit bone as a weapon and an Italian bistro as a spaceship, embarks on an intergalactic journey to save the universe.
To say that I was impressed after listening to it would be the biggest understatement there is.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that many cast members from the original BBC Radio 4 series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy have come together in some way for an excellent sequel.
There was about 20 minutes of material that was obviously not contained in the broadcast version. The total run time was around 3 hours and 10 minutes.
I never imagined that I could enjoy listening to an audiobook for so long, but not only did I enjoy it, I was entertained as well.
If you haven’t included in this new six-part dramatization of Douglas Adam’s book “Life, the Universe and Everything,” you are missing a lot.
The cast of this classic audiobook includes Arthur Dent, played by Simon Jones. Also Ford Perfect, played by Geoffrey McGivern; Trillian, played by Susan Sheridan; Zaphod Beeblebrox, played by Mark Wing-Davey; Marvin the Paranoid Android, played by Stephen Moore.
Other popular names in this classic audiobook include Chris Langham, Richard Griffiths, and Joanna Lumley. Famous cricket commentators, Fred Trueman and Henry Blofed, were also part of those who made this audiobook possible.
Aside from the powerful creativity involved in the voices used, all the sound quality and production values were actually very high.
Winner of the Gold Award for Theater, Television and Film and the Silver Award for Production; Spoken Word Awards 2005, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy audiobook has continued to be a bestseller on audio CD, cassette and download, just as it has been on radio.
If you haven’t included in this audiobook, do yourself a favor and request your copy right away. You can get it from Amazon or any other popular audio book store on the internet.
