Long listens
The Best Audiobooks for Road Trips
Thanksgiving week and the run-up to Christmas are the longest hours most people spend in a car all year, and a short book runs out somewhere around the second rest stop. Everything on this shelf clears ten hours, scored well in our full review, and shows its narrator and runtime so you can match the book to the drive. Download it before you pull out, because the interstate is where coverage goes to die.
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Match the book to the car
Picking One for the Drive
With kids in the back. The Lightning Thief runs 10 hours 2 minutes, two minutes past this shelf's ten-hour floor, and its short chapters mean a stop for gas will not strand a kid mid-scene. For a longer haul, The Fellowship of the Ring is 19 hours 7 minutes with Rob Inglis singing every poem to melodies he wrote himself. Both survive an adult driver listening on repeat.
When one voice is not enough. Dune is staged across a cast of twelve over 21 hours 2 minutes and won the Audie for science fiction, and a full cast is the fix for the problem highway driving creates: when every character sounds different, a mile of merging traffic does not cost you the thread.
For stop-start driving. Long does not have to mean unbroken. The Man Who Died Twice runs 11 hours 49 minutes in short chapters, read by Lesley Manville, which suits a day broken up by gas stations and an argument about lunch.
