The Bible in One Year, New International Version
read by David Suchet CBE (Hodder and Stoughton, £29.99; also available as a digital download)
David Suchet is one of the popular and talented actors of his time, famous for in incarnation of Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Poirot (whose ‘little grey cells’ were informed by the conscience of a cradle-Catholic). Since Suchet himself became a Christian, as he puts, at the age of 40, it has been his ambition to bring the good news of the Scriptures to the widest possible audience.
These six MP3 CDs, running for about 80 hours, are his latest project. The readings themselves took 200 hours simply to record. But they provide not just “the Bible in a year”, but a way of revisiting favourite texts. With fewer people in their 20s actually owning any book at all, these CDs may in the future be the way many encounter the Book.