The complete Harry Potter by JK Rowling, read by Stephen Fry
5 days 7 hrs 39 mins, equivalent to cycling from New York City to Miami Beach
Stephen Fry’s peerless narration of JK Rowling’s world-storming story about the boy magician, the Dark Lord, and the various mishaps, prophecies and extracurricular adventures at that very peculiar school Hogwarts, crowns this the king of the audiobook world. Perhaps your parents played it during long car journeys as a child, or you listened to it furtively in your bedroom way past your bedtime. Well, it’s even better as an adult. Sit back, relax and let Fry do the hard work for you.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, read by Frederick Davidson
61 hrs 8 mins, equivalent to driving from Inverness to Tel Aviv
James Norton caused a stir when he took over our screens in the BBC’s six-part adaptation of Tolstoy’s vast 19th-century novel about life among Russia’s aristocracy in the Napoleonic wars. Seeing as merely holding the book aloft is likely to do you an injury, it’s wise to find an audible alternative. Luckily, the late Frederick Davidson – the chain-smoking titan of the audiobook world, who narrated more than 700 titles – had a quick 61-hour flick-through to make your life easier.
Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection by Arthur Conan Doyle, read by Stephen Fry
72 hrs 3 mins, equivalent to cycling from Monaco to Madrid
Elementary, my dear Watson. Though, of course, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock’s creator, never really wrote those words – it’s a misattribution. Or is it? Find out for yourself by listening to Stephen Fry reading the Victorian novels that birthed the most well-known detective in the English language (with apologies to Poirot and Marple).
The Romanovs 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore, read by Simon Russell Beale
28 hrs 45 mins, equivalent to driving from London to Tallinn
Russia’s a big country, which means that any attempt to cover even a chunk of its history is going to take up a lot of book. Simon Sebag Montefiore’s look at the history of the Romanovs – the dynasty of tsars and tsarinas who ruled Russia and its empire from the 17th century up until the revolutions of 1917 and the death of Tsar Nicholas II in 1918 – was well reviewed, but is a heavy book to carry around and get through. Simon Russell Beale, the Bafta-winning actor who starred in films The Death of Stalin and Into the Woods, reads it all for you, which makes it much easier to sort your tsarinas from your Tatianas and your Alexanders from your, er, other Alexanders.
Ulysses by James Joyce, read by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan
27 hrs 16 mins, equivalent to flying from London to Wellington
This is probably one of those books you always thought you ought to manage if only you could summon the wherewithal. James Joyce’s bizarre, epic, rambling novel is a literary landmark. Saying you’ve read it is a sure-fire way to earn appreciative nods from any real-life writers at your friend’s dinner party – and they need never know that it was read to you in Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan’s dulcet tones.
Bleak House by Charles Dickens, read by Miriam Margolyes
43 hrs 12 mins, equivalent to flying from London to Los Angeles and back, twice
Unless you’ve got Miriam Margolyes (think Professor Sprout in Harry Potter and Mrs Mingott in The Age of Innocence) guiding you through Charles Dickens’s least-enticing-sounding novel, with its vast list of characters and occasionally impenetrable satire, the truly bleak part about ticking Bleak House off your should-really-read-that list will be all the paper cuts you get from turning those oh-so-many pages.
James Bond: The Collection by various authors, read by various narrators
12 days 22 hrs 58 mins, equivalent to driving from Tunis to Cape Town and back
Almost no other literary character has had such traction, such deep cultural penetration and such extensive remodelling as James Bond. Originally created by Ian Fleming and named after the author of a book on birds in the Caribbean, Bond has captured the imagination of writers, from Anthony Horowitz and John Gardner, to Kingsley Amis and Sebastian Faulks. This extraordinary, leviathan series – with readers including Bill Nighy, David Tennant, Rosamund Pike, Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Bonneville – encompasses almost all of them.
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, read by Scott Brick
35 hrs 58 mins, equivalent to cycling from Madrid to Barcelona
It’s the musical that’s become a phenomenon: it’s been used to subtweet President Trump by the American Civil Liberties Union; been poignantly performed in parts in front of Barack Obama in his last days of office; and had its every line obsessed over by legions of fans across the world. But the book Hamilton was largely based on, Ron Chernow’s hefty, comprehensive biography of the US’s first treasury secretary, hasn’t had quite so much attention. It should – it’s a great listen, contains some insightful stuff and will help you get your head around the show that bit better.
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