We recently asked Audible Listeners to vote for their favourite listen of 2007 and we’re thrilled to announce that the winner was Richard Dawkins's controversial book The God Delusion in which he presents a hard-hitting, impassioned rebuttal of religion. The audiobook is read by Richard Dawkins and his wife Lalla Ward (pictured here with their awards).
We have both the abridged and unabridged versions of the book on our site and it was the unabridged version which was voted the winner. You can't buy this version in the shops - it is only available as a download from Audible. This highlights a trend that we have noticed recently in the audiobook industry. Publishers produce an abridged version of the book for the bookshops and the more traditional CD and cassette markets. However because of the high costs of producing lots of CDs for an unabridged audiobook they only release the unabridged version as a download. This is good news for Audible as it means we are getting more unabridged titles on the website!
The God Delusion won out of a shortlist of five books which were voted for by Audible Listeners. All the books on the shortlist have one thing in common: they are extremely high quality audio productions. The other books on the shortlist were: The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennet, Dune by Frank Herbert, A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr and The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin.The shortlist was chosen from a longlist of 20 books. Click here to see the complete longlist.
Have you listened to The God Delusion? Should it have won Download of the Year? Let us know by posting your comments below.
Richard Dawkins read The God Delusion but did you know that he has also narrated a number of other audiobooks. Click here to see the complete list.
Julie Murphy, Online Editor
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