As I’m looking at the press release for the commercial launch of BBC Audiobooks America, I ask myself: How the heck is it that Roots has never been on audiobook before? And how awesome is it that they got Avery Brooks to read the entire thing to fill up 24 CDs?
That aside, here’s the skinny: the Beeb has been providing audiobooks to American libraries for a while now, but the release of a “BBC Audio” edition of Mohsin Hamid‘s The Reluctant Fundamentalist this month marks their entrance into the U.S. trade market, with distribution provided by Perseus. The company will also be unveiling a “BBC Radio” brand, which will present compilations of programming from, among other sources, Radio 4; the first highlight on that front is a two-CD version of The History Boys, performed by the cast of the play’s National Theater production. After that, there’s a 64-CD set of all the Sherlock Holmes stories with a list price of $250… Speaking of Radio 4, I was poking around the website just now, and it looks like the station will be providing free downloads of the MP3s from Jeffrey Sachs‘s series of Reith Lectures at Oxford for the next month. Those are going onto my hard drive at the first opportunity, that’s for sure…