(Note: I looked around to see if this subject was touched on before, and I couldn’t find anything. Even so, if this [i]was talked about previously, sorry for bringing it up again)[/i]

I was first introduced to the Thursday Next series via the audiobook version of The Eyre Affair (published by Highbridge Audio). I got the Lost In A Good Book audiobook some time later (after listening to TEA about six times), and only recently got a copy of LIAGB in its original format (the US edition).

However, as I was reading through LIAGB for the first time, I noticed something that completely confused me:
In Chapter 31, when Cordelia finally gets Thursday to talk to “her people,” she introduces them as James and Catia Plummer, a married couple. However, in the audiobook, she introduces them as David and Molly Graham, and they are father and daughter. The narrative and dialogue of the scene from the audiobook version are similar to the scene from the book, but there are several notable differences.

For instance, Molly is greeted by Pickwick, and the two of them start to become friends (they even start playing hide-and-seek near the end of the chapter), and when Molly remarks, “Your dodo says she’s hungry” (instead of Catia’s more mature “I think your dodo is hungry” line from the book), Thursday asks Codelia to get the marshmallow jar down from the top of the fridge (since Molly is probably too short to reach that high), and in the end, Cordelia drops the jar on top of the evidence bag.

The biggest difference of all takes place shortly before the chapter’s end: David doesn’t ask Thursday about “the father of Pickwick’s egg” when they’re driving to ConStuff. Instead, he asks her about her father’s clockstopping ability and how he does it. It’s a completely different conversation.

I have no idea why these two versions of the same novel are so different, I can understand some minor changes to the audiobook narrative (i.e., Thursday’s enloopment only lasting six repetitions instead of the fourteen in the actual text), but why would Chapter 31 have to be so drastically different from its written counterpart?


Akril

Welcome! Have some veirtual food. Not really sure what we have lying around, but someone should be around soon!

Ahhhh. that would be because there was a contest in the UK and then in the US for charity. The winners got to ask a question and appear at the end of the book. There was a winner for the US AND for the UK, so that accounts for the two different versions. The audio book must have taken the UK version instead of the American one. Hope that helps.

Thanks for the greetings...

And wouldn't you know it...I find the answer to my question in the topic directly under this one. I should've known...

I was a bit confused because Highbridge Audio is based in the US, and the picture used on the audiobook's cover is the same as the picture on the US edition of LIAGB, I assumed that the adaptation itself would be the US edition. I guess not.


Akril

It's quite all right. I would have thought they'd have used the US version, too. I have an audio book copy as well, but I;ve never bothered to listen to it as i don;t like the voice that reads it.

Yes, I also have the US audio version, and it does have the winners from the UK edition in it. I noticed that myself, and presumed that since the US audio and print editions came out at the same time, they must have started recording it ahead of the print edition, and somehow hadn't gotten the contest winners updated in the script they used.