Listened to the audio book this time. It was original American full dramatisation aired on NPR. This was shorter than I remembered. When reading these as a teenager, Tolkien's need to describe every damned thing in detail made it seem so much longer. The audio book may have cut some of that down since it was only 3.5 hours long. But I looked at my physical copy and its not a tome. Anyway, it was nice to get some of that detail back in my memory after all these years and the movies. That's the reason I decided to pick it up again.

With regards to the audio, I'm not a huge fan of some of the voices. Several sound too similar to each other despite being different actors (I checked). Frodo sounds emotionless even at very exciting, emotional and life threatening moments. And Sam sounds super young which kept throwing me off. Otherwise it was well done and wonderfully acted.