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title: "47 Hours With Gone With the Wind: The Longest Audiobook I've Finished"
description: "Gone with the Wind audiobook review: 47 hours, one credit, Charlton Griffin's one-man cast. Full vs abridged math and who should spend a credit."
tags: ["audiobook", "audible", "reviews"]
canonical_url: https://getcreditworth.com/blog/gone-with-the-wind-audiobook
I have a rule for long audiobooks: anything over 30 hours needs to earn its spot. Gone with the Wind comes in at 47 hours and 12 minutes, so it had a lot to earn. It did, mostly.
The narrator is Charlton Griffin, the theatrical type. Scarlett gets a Southern drawl. Rhett drops into a low, mocking register. Melanie stays soft-spoken. One man, dozens of characters, no sound effects. Some people find it overdone. I found it hard to imagine anyone else reading it.
The math: one Audible credit, $23.28 cash, $0.49 per hour. That puts it among the best value in long historical fiction.
Full vs abridged: the abridged version is about 12 hours. It keeps the plot and loses the atmosphere. First-time listeners should go full.
The pacing problem: the first third moves slowly. Cotton fields, balls, a love triangle. The war does not really start until the middle. If you need fast plot, this is not your book.
The era problem: the racial portrayals carry the marks of 1936. That deserves a straight warning before you spend a credit, not everyone will be comfortable with it.
My take: if you have the patience, it is worth it. 47 hours is a month of background listening, and the payoff is one of the most complete portraits of a character arc in American fiction. Two minutes of Griffin's voice in the sample chapter will tell you whether his style is yours.
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