The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
It tells a story. Hardcover files this book as fiction, and its readers there call it lighthearted, funny and adventurous. Facts, not factors: neither plays any part in our call.
Listen to it
Andy Serkis’ reading is what wins it: it lands in the top 17% of our shelf of books, on 10,121 ratings of the narration, which is a lot of credit for a voice. And nothing about the book is fighting the format.
Length does not decide this
10h 24m to listen, at 1×8h 19m to listen, at 1.25×6h 56m to listen, at 1.5×5h 57m to listen, at 1.75×5h 12m to listen, at 2×about 12 hours to readabout 9 hours to readabout 7 hours to readabout 6 hours to readabout 4½ hours to read
The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 366 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 366 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 366 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 366 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 366 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.
Slot → commute-safe
Harder work in audio than Slaughterhouse-Five.
About as much work in audio as most of the books we hold.
About as much work in audio as most of the fiction we hold.
About as much work in audio as most of the long books we hold.
Reading load against listening load
Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the middle 40% of our shelf of books on both counts (effort on the page and effort in your ears). The middle of the scale is not the middle of the shelf (most books sit below the average on both), so a book at 0.00 is already in the top 43% for effort on the page. Each of the three is measured against the whole shelf separately, so the bottom figure is not the top two subtracted. It is this book’s own distance from the middle.
What the audio disadvantage is made of. Two things and no others: how fast readers say this one moves, and how demanding the reviews we read found it. There is no third: the structural one has no data source, so it contributes nothing rather than being guessed at. Both directions are declared priors we have never fitted against a real verdict, which is the weakest-evidenced part of the whole model.
How the call was made
Where a bar carries ticks, the grey one is the middle of our shelf and a coloured one is a line we publish, cool where we start backing the page, warm where we start backing the recording. The evidence squares at the foot are a different thing: how far each of our four sources went, hatched where there was nothing to measure at all.
- The audio case
- 0.82It sits in the top 25% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page. Past the line where we start backing the recording.
- Narration payoff
- 0.64Andy Serkis’ reading is better received than the book it came from: in the top 17% of our shelf of books, on 10,121 ratings of the narration. This is a difference, not a score: it sets the reading against its own book, so a much-loved book with a merely good reading sits low on this shelf even where nobody disliked either. That is measured on standardised figures rather than on the stars in the charts below, and here the two disagree: listeners mark a performance higher than a story as a rule, 4.62 against 4.54 across our shelf, so this recording’s 4.93 for the performance beside 4.88 for the story is not the level pair it looks. Against their own crowds they are +1.32 and +1.38, which is the same sum the toggle over those charts does. Asked the other way (how the reading stands against what the book’s own readers made of it, which is a different crowd rating a different thing), it comes out 0.80. We report that one and never score it: two crowds that do not overlap are held together by nothing but the standardising, which is a cost the figure above does not pay.
- What is at stake
- 0.92It sits in the top 19% of our shelf of books for how well the print crowds think of a book: well enough regarded that a wasted first encounter costs more, so we lean towards protecting the page. Blended across 4,632,535 Goodreads ratings and 7,269 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.
For the page
- The print crowds think highly of it
For the recording
- The voice beats the book
- Audio is neither helping nor fighting this one
- 10,121 listeners behind it
So the case for the recording won it.
A bigger dot counted for more: the voice and the ear are sized by their share of the sum above, the other two by how much stands behind them. A hatched square is a reason that did not apply here, which is not the same as one that counted for little.
- Evidence
- 1.00How much of the picture we actually have, out of 1.00: four questions, each answered as far as the source could answer it, less anything taken off for reading fewer reviews than we aim to.The reading10,121 people have rated this reading: as good as it getsThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 7,269 readers there: as good as it getsThe matchHow sure we are that the recording we scored is this book: as good as it getsThe reviewsWe read 300 reviews to judge how demanding it is: as good as it gets
What each crowd complains about
In the reviews we read, how often readers brought it up and how often listeners did, each against what is usual for that same crowd across our whole shelf, which is the grey tick. The track stops at 4×. Listeners are only ever compared with listeners.
Readers of this book bring up keeping the names straight about 2.8 times as often as readers usually do, while listeners of it never mention it at all.
What the two crowds said
Showing the stars as each shop prints them. The two crowds are not measured from the same place: on our shelf Audible’s listeners average 0.35 of a star above Goodreads’ readers, so a recording that is ordinary for Audible can still out-star a book that is genuinely well liked for Goodreads. Switch the toggle to take that difference off.Showing each figure as its distance from its own crowd’s middle on our shelf, in standard deviations, so 0 is a typical book for that crowd. Listeners start 0.35 of a star up, partly because anyone who finishes a twenty-five-hour recording chose it deliberately, and this takes that off. It is not a claim that audio is better, the story figure is still Audible’s own (people rating a story they heard), and none of it moves the verdict above.
overallAudible
overall, pooled by the shop, so we hold no ruler for it
11,552 ratings · performance and story, as the shop pools them
the performanceAudible
the performance, against Audible’s own crowd
How often this goes badly0.4% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars. Fewer than most recordings here. The middle of our shelf is 2.0%, and half of it falls between 1.0% and 3.1%.
42 of 10,152 listeners gave the performance one or two stars
The shape of the room
- United, this one
- Warm
- Split
- Lukewarm
A united room: 95% of the listeners gave the performance five stars. A room that agrees this far leaves little to gamble on.
10,152 ratings
the story, as heardAudible
the story, as heard, against Audible’s own crowd
10,121 ratings
the book itselfGoodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
4,632,535 ratings
The series
Middle Earth
Finished · One voice listed throughout
4 books numbered on Goodreads’ list, with 3 novellas or companions filed between them. The last one came out in 1977 and Goodreads lists nothing further. Five quiet years is where we start using that word.
Andy Serkis is listed for all of the 4 volumes Audible names in our records, though on some of them a different reading is the better-attested one: Martin Shaw reads book 0, Andy Serkis books 0.5, 1 and 3.
From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 11 September 2026.
Every reading we hold
Two complete readings of it, and one call above for the book: the verdict is a claim about format, not about a voice. Which voice to press play on is the next question, and this is our answer to it. Below 250 ratings of the reading we name a recording and decline to rank it.
- Andy Serkisour pick10h 24m8h 19m6h 56m5h 57m5h 12m · One voice · Audible UK and US
Performance 4.93 · Story 4.88 · 10,121 rated the reading · 0.4% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars
Hear it · Audible’s clip, its length read from them on load
- Rob Inglisalso worth hearing11h 02m8h 50m7h 21m6h 18m5h 31m · One voice · Audible UK
Performance 4.69 · Story 4.80 · 6,860 rated the reading · 1.6% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars
Hear it · Audible’s clip, its length read from them on load
Listeners rate Andy Serkis’s performance 0.24 of a star above Rob Inglis’s: 4.93 on 10,121 ratings against 4.69 on 6,860 ratings. Our call is Listen to it, and it rests on Andy Serkis’s reading. Run the same arithmetic on Rob Inglis’s (6,860 ratings of the narration behind it, which is why we let it argue) and it comes out Read it: same book, same rule, a different voice. On this one the format that deserves your first encounter depends on which reading you can get.
Andy Serkis’s reading is in our Hall of Fame, and the figures that earned it are all on that page.
3 other listings we set aside, listed with the reason for eacheach one is sold as this book and is not a complete reading of it
- Martin Shaw5h 57m4h 46m3h 58m3h 24m2h 59m · 1,141 ratingsAbridged: it runs 56% of the full reading
- Heron Carvic, Paul Daneman, Anthony Jackson, Francis de Wolff, John Justin, John Pullen, Full cast3h 42m2h 58m2h 28m2h 07m1h 51m · 760 ratingsNot the whole book, only 35% of the full reading
- Bernard Cribbins, Maurice Denham, Jan Francis, David Wood2h 27m1h 58m1h 38m1h 24m1h 14m · 78 ratingsNot a straight reading of the book
The recording we mean
- Runtime
- 10h 24m at 1×
- Read by
- Andy Serkis
- Kind
- One voice
- ASIN
- 0008433844 · Audible UK
- Rated in
- Audible UK and US · 9,055 + 1,097 ratings of the performance
- Judged on
- 10,121 ratings of the narration
- Published
- HarperCollins · 2020
Audible sorts a search by newest, so ours may not be the first one you are offered. The runtime is the check: if the one in front of you says 10h 24m, that is the reading these numbers describe. “Judged on” is the crowd behind every judgement we make about this reading: the smaller of the performance and story counts, which is why it is a little under the two shop counts added. We do not link out to a shop, and we take nothing if you buy there.