Audiobooks seem like they’re the new drug that newspapers are using to give brief boosts to their ABCs. In particular the Times stable is using them quite a bit. Chocolat was in last week’s Sunday Times, today sees Captain Corelli’s Mandolin in The Times, while tomorrow the Sunday Times has a “unique” version of Eats, Shoots and Leaves and in a week’s time there’s Stormbreaker (to tie in with the forthcoming film no doubt).
All well and good, but the disc of Mandolin I have in front of me runs to 78 minutes. Now I’ve read and enjoyed the book (I’ve not seen the film, and have no intention of doing so), but one thing that is worth noting is that it’s a substantial read, running to over 400 pages. I’m sure that some readers raced through it in a single evening, but I think that it’s fair to say that the first 50 or so pages are quite dense and take a bit of getting through before you can get properly stuck into the novel.
Consulting various online catalogues, there are currently two UK audiobook versions of Captain Corelli available. An unabridged version read by Michael Maloney running to 18 CDs and costing £50 or more, and an abridged version read by Robert Powell running to just over three hours on 3 CDs costing substantially less.
The Times’ edition is read by James Wilby, and as mentioned, runs to just 78 minutes. All three versions are “BBC Audio” editions, but I’ve really got to question the point of trying to abridge a book like Captain Corelli down to a paltry 78 minutes. In our iPod age, would giving away an mp3 CD be such a bad idea? You could get a much longer version on a single disc?
Anyhow, the ad in today’s Times for next week’s Stormbreaker CD says that it’s unabridged. The book is seemingly 240 pages long, so unless it’s being read by a racing commentator, I’m going to be interested to hear how they do this.