Have you listened to the greatest audio book of all time?
This was the question I was asked by a group of friends I met while shopping for an audio book collection in an audio book forum.
They were all raving about the greatest audio book of all times, talking about how wonderful it felt being entertained by the creativity of the entire series, when I joined them.
Thinking they were going to say the greatest book of all time was Harry Potter, I said yes I had read the greatest audio book of all times.
Then when they asked me how much I loved the role played by Arthur Dent, I knew I was dead wrong to think Harry Potter was the greatest audio book of all time.
To this group and almost everyone in that particular forum, the greatest audio book of all time was none other than "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
Person after person, members of the forum said so many good things about the brand new third series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which now comes to audio on CD, cassette and download with 25 minutes of unbroadcast footage.
I had been a great fan of the original BBC Radio 4 series so knew they had to be right.
What really impressed me was when they said the author himself - Douglas Adams - played the role of Agrajag.
I immediately went to Amazon and ordered for the complete six part dramatization - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Tertiary Phase.
The plot picked up from the exact spot that the second radio series left off. Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect had escaped from prehistoric Earth using a time-travelling sofa. At the time some homicidal robots had blown up Lords Cricket Ground.
Arthur, with only a rabbit bone as his weapon and an Italian bistro like spaceship, embarks on an intergalactic journey to save the universe.
To say I was blown away after listening to it would be the greatest understatement there is.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of the cast of the original BBC Radio 4 series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have somehow been reunited for a superb sequel.
There were about 20 minutes of material obviously not contained in the broadcast version. The entire running time was around 3 hours and 10 minutes.
I never imagined I could enjoy listening to an audio book for that long, but I not only enjoyed it, I was thoroughly entertained.
If you haven't listened to this new six-part dramatization of Douglas Adam's book "Life, the Universe and Everything" you are missing a lot.
The cast in this classic audio book include 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 audio book include Chris Langham, Richard Griffiths, and Joanna Lumley. Famous cricket commentators, Fred Trueman and Henry Blofed were also part of those that made this audio book possible.
Apart from the powerful creativity involved in the voices used, the entire sound quality and production values were very high indeed.
Winner of both the Gold Award for Drama, TV and Film and the Silver Award for Production; Spoken Word Awards 2005, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy audio book has continued to be a bestseller on audio CD, cassette and download, as it has been on radio.
If you haven't listened to this audio book, do yourself a favor and order your copy right away. You can get it from Amazon or any other popular audio book store on the Internet.
| 
