by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol -- audio book narrated by Simon Vance

The Chimes -- audio book narrated by Richard Armitage

 

 

What better way to spend Christmas than with a few classics.  Of course, I only ever knew that Charles Dickens had written A Christmas Carol, as it is a timeless classic and favorite of every generation.  You see adaptations of it all over the place from Disney to the Muppets and so on and so forth.

 

But you know, I wonder if I've ever actually read the original book itself.

 

I received an email today with a gift from Audible to Audible members, a free audio book gift that turned out to be The Chimes by Charles Dickens, narrated by Richard Armitage.  While I've heard of this narrator before, I've never actually listened to any of the books he's narrated.  So I figured I'd go ahead and get it--freebies are awesome, always.

 

And then I read in the summary that The Chimes was the second of the five Christmas themed books Charles Dickens had been commissioned to write--A Christmas Carol being the first.

 

So I said, "What the heck! Why not?" and went on to buy A Christmas Carol in audio book form as well.

 

Of course, I DID spend a good amount of time browsing the Dickens selections because there are at least ten different versions of A Christmas Carol in audio book form.  My goodness--and all the samples sounded good as well!  I had recently shelved the Tim Curry narration and thought about getting that one.  There's even one narrated by Jim Dale (the same guy who does the Harry Potter books).

 

And then I finally stumbled upon a version narrated by Simon Vance.  I love Simon Vance.  His voice.  I love his voice.

 

After listening to various narrators reading the full cast Dracula audio book, I found Simon Vance to be my favorite of the cast (followed very closely by Alan Cumming).  And so I made my decision to choose the Simon Vance narration of A Christmas Carol.

 

While everyone else will be listening to Christmas carols and music in their cars, I will be indulging in a bit of Charles Dickens and some very awesome British story book narrators.

 

Other Dickens Christmas Books include:

  • The Cricket on the Hearth
  • The Battle of Life
  • The Haunted Man