What Audiobook Are We Listening To?
This week at Crash Symphony Productions, we’re listening to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the audiobook as read by Stephen Fry. I found these audiobook adaptations to be a really easy way to get back into Harry Potter without having to pick up my old hard copies which are falling apart by now and probably couldn’t handle another single read-through. There is no one better to narrate these books than Stephen Fry, whose personality, history, intelligence and sense of humour are at the level where they can do adequate credit to the intelligence, history, humour and personality possessed by the books themselves.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 8 hours and 33 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Pottermore from J.K. Rowling
- Audible.com Release Date: November 20, 2015
- Language: English
“A marriage made in heaven, Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter.” (The Times)
“Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large letter ‘H’.”
Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry’s eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!
“A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours’ time by Mrs. Dursley’s scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley…He couldn’t know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: “To Harry Potter – the boy who lived!”
You can find the audiobook for purchase on Audible or Amazon.
