I am a huge fan of Will (and Ariel) Durant’s Story of Civilization series of history books. I have all 11 volumes in hardcover. The first book was published in 1935 and the last one in the early 1980s, I believe. There are an astonishingly comprehensive history of human civilization up through Napoleon.
I’ve read the first three books in the series, two of them twice. Last year, I noticed that they were being released as audio books, new recording from some big names, including Grover Gardner and Stefan Rudnicki. The first three books came out and I bought them at once, thinking about how delightful it would be to listen to them on my daily walks.
Every day for months, I check Audible’s site in the hope that the fourth volume, The Age of Faith, which I haven’t yet read, will come out. And every day, I go away disappointed.
But not today. When I popped into Audible’s site 10 minutes ago, I saw this:
The Age of Faith is the longest book in a series of long books. The audio version of this book alone is over 61 hours. For comparison, I listened just over 61 hours of audio book in all of April. But I have to say, I was so excited when I saw it there, and it will very likely be the next book I listen to after I finish the book I’m reading now.
It is also possible that Grover Gardner will be back to narrate another of the later volumes, as this tweet from Gardner hints at earlier this year:
@dhemery I’ll be doing the third in the series and possibly some of the others. Sadly couldn’t commit to doing them all.
— Grover Gardner (@GroverGardner) January 3, 2014
In any case, I’m super-excited that this latest book is finally out and I can’t wait to listen to it.
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Jamie, I’m with you. I loved those books. I got them in some sort of book-of-the-month club thing. As an avid audiobook listener, I had no idea these were released. I can do long audio books. The 3rd volume of Robert Caro’s LBJ, Master of the Senate, was pretty long. You get to where the narrator is like a friend and he’s just talking to you. I love audio. Thanks for the tip on the Durants.
It’s positively Sandersonian in size!
As I pointed out on Twitter afterward, the first 4 books in the series total 180 hours of listening time. And there are still 7 more books!