Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again

As everyone knows I'm a huge fan of audiobooks. If you spend as much time as I do knitting it's just a fact that you cannot spend any time reading, unless you had four hands of course, as a result of this I am obsessive (we're talking two a week) audiobook listener. So when one of our family friends told me she had an audiobook she wanted me to listen to I was obviously drawn in, and when I found out the person reading the audiobook was David Tennant, well, it was a sealed deal.

Before I talk about how amazing the book was, I want to talk about something to do with audiobooks that has been bugging me for a while. In my opinion, the skills needed to read an audiobook are huge! A well read audiobook can be a true work of art, and a badly read audiobook can be hell. I once listened to 30 hours of Jane Eyre read in an American accent and let me tell you it was one of the worst experiences of my life. The artists reading the audiobook put in hours and hours of time and effort and yet when it comes to purchasing an audiobook you basically never even get to see who is reading it! It's never advertised on the cover, barely even mentioned, and yet for the audiobook listener, quality of the recording is as important as the book itself! In my opinion, websites such as audible and the audiobook section of iTunes should put much more effort into telling the customer who it is that they are about to spend 24 hours of their lives listening to instead of putting it in as an afterthought! But this might just be me.. after all I do spend about half my life listening to these things!

Okay, back to the point, the reason I really started to care about this is because David Tennants recording of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again is so amazing I couldn't not talk about it! 

The book was written by Frank Cottrell Boyce as a sequel to the original Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming. It is set in modern day England and tells the story of the Tooting Family who find an abandoned engine that they attach onto their camper van, only to find out that the engine used to belong to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The car then leads them on a crazy adventure all over the world. I always loved the original Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and bringing it into the modern day is such a great idea. I had a worry the book was going to be too 'young' for me but I ended up loving it so so much. It's really funny, exciting and amazingly written. It would obviously appeal to people younger than me but I would recommend it to all ages!

The camper van that takes 'glamping' to a whole new level!

David Tennant brings the book to life with his brilliant recording! I hadn't really clocked how great his voice was until I listened to this but it really is. The audiobook begins with a very interesting interview with him about the book. He does a very clever thing while recording it which is that he uses 'voices' for all the characters except the dad of the family which means the dad ends up being the only one you really think of as 'David Tennant'. This may sound crazy but when I was listening to it I almost felt as if I was watching David Tennant play the part of the Dad. 

If you've already read this brilliant book please leave a comment to tell me if you agree and if you haven't I would DEFINITELY recommend either buying the book or, even better, the audiobook! 

Have a great Tuesday, Love Scarlett xx