What A Load Of Tolkien

I was perusing my audiobooks in iTunes to see what I'd like to listen to or listen to again before the release of the next Harry Potter book.
I have quite a few audiobooks now and as I was scrolling though and I was surprised at just how much Tolkien I had. In total I have 4:15:51:41 of Tolkien. That's 4 days, 15 hours, 51 minutes, and 41 seconds of Middle Earth goodness. I had forgotten that I had Radio Dramatizations of the books as well as the audio versions of the books.

The Silmarillion (unabridged audiobook) : 14 hours, 49 minutes, 53 seconds.
Martin Shaw's reading is grave and resonant, conveying all the powerful events and emotions that shaped elven/men/dwarf history and Middle Earth itself.

The Hobbit (unabridged audiobook) : 11 hours, 4 minutes, 51 seconds.
The Fellowship Of The Ring (unabridged audiobook) : 19 hours, 9 minutes, 54 seconds.
The Two Towers (unabridged audiobook) : 16 hours, 43 minutes, 18 seconds.
The Return Of The King (unabridged audiobook) : 18 hours, 22 minutes, 57 seconds.
All read by Rob Inglis in 1990. Inglis has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and his old-school English voice is a perfect match for the books. He shines with comedy, but he's also good at conveying solemnity, and his reading of the madness of Denethor was genuinely frightening. His voice of Gollum is the most distinctive, and clearly the one he had the most fun with: cackling, gurgling, whining, and hissing, simultaneously hilarious and pathetic. Even if you've read the books many times yourself, hearing them aloud is different. You are forced to listen to passages you might have otherwise skipped or hurried over, and many of them yield up unexpected treasures, a turn of phrase or simile that you never noticed before. We can never again read them for the first time; but this is the next best thing.

American Dramatizations
The Hobbit : 4 hours, 42 minutes, 51 seconds.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy : 10 hours, 26 minutes, 50 seconds.
A 1979 dramatization of The Lord of the Rings was broadcast in the USA. No cast or credits appear on the audio packaging. Each of the actors was apparently recorded separately and then the various parts were edited together. There is an old-school charm to these old analog recordings. This version is chalked full of fun songs. There is a charming renascence style to the instrumentation. The Dwarf songs are catchy and some what hypnotic.

BBC Dramatization
The Hobbit : 3 hours, 42 minutes, 51 seconds.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy : 13 hours, 15 minutes, 13 seconds.
In 1981 the BBC broadcast The Lord of the Rings, a new, ambitious dramatisation in 26 half-hour installments. It stared Ian Holm as Frodo Baggins, who played Bilbo Baggins, his character's cousin/uncle, in the live-action trilogy.

Yes, that's Leonard Nimoy a.k.a. Mr. Spock crooning about Bilbo in the video below.