Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone Audiobook

This blog post will cover everything worth knowing about Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone Audiobook. From a review of the narrators Jim Dale and Stephen Fry, to plot summary. Did you just come here to find a way to listen to the audiobook? Just click below. Otherwise, keep on reading!

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By clicking above you can listen to the first Harry Potter audiobook completely free via Audible, an audiobook provider part of Amazon. This is our recommended way of enjoying the book, as the sound quality and easiness of Audible are unmatched  🙂

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Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone in audiobook format is one of many ways to enjoy the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. The audiobook is about 9 hours long in its narrated format, but believe me when I say that it feels like far less. The book is one of the most popular in the Harry Potter series and has been narrated by two famous narrators, namely Stephen Fry and Jim Dale. A thorough review of their performance as narrators and what they imply for the overall impression of the book is covered further down. Just check the contents below, in case you want to skip directly to hear more about them.

The Plot of The First Harry Potter Audiobook

The very start of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone, starts with a man named Mr. Dursley who experiences strange things on his journey to his job. The very same night the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Wizardry, Dumbledore, a professor of the school named McGonagall, and a giant called Hagrid, meet outside the home of Dursley and his family. The headmaster explains that a villain called Voldemort is the responsible person for the death of a young couple, the Potters, but that their infant son, Harry, miraculously survived the death spell used on him. As the now orphaned Harry has no other family, he is left on the Dursley’s porch by Dumbledore, together with a note that explains the terrible happenings of the night.

The Dursley’s choose to keep Potter, and 10 years later Potter is living with the family. However, Harry has not been given the nicest childhood, as the Dursley´s always spoiled their own child, Dudley, and let Harry sleep in a tiny space under the stairs. One day the family and Harry visits the zoo, as it is Dudley’s birthday, and suddenly the glass containing a huge snake disappears without explanation, and sets the snake free…

Letters start to arrive for Harry, which worries Mr. Dursley who tries everything in his power to keep them away from Harry, but the letters won’t stop coming, and no matter the efforts from Mr. Dursley the letters make it into the house in various unbelievable ways. To get away from the madness, the Dursley’s decide to take the family and Potter to a shack on a remote island on the evening of Harry’s 11th birthday. In the middle of the night, the door of the shack is knocked on and opened by the giant Hagrid, who personally came to deliver Harry’s letter regarding the acceptance of a place in Hogwarts, the school of wizardry.

Harry takes off with Hagrid, who brings him to London to get the necessary equipment for the magic semester to come. The first stop is at Gringotts, the wizards bank run by greedy goblins, but to Harry’s surprise he finds out that his parents left him a good amount of gold. They move down Diagon Alley, the most famous shopping street for wizards and Harry gets a uniform, books for the semester, and of course a wand. The wand that selects him is the counterpart to Voldemort’s, the villain who killed his parents, and tried to kill him.

A few weeks after his first encounter with the magic world at Diagon Alley, Harry Potter starts his journey to Hogwarts. After getting on the train he meets two other students who also were accepted to Hogwarts, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. The trio becomes fond of each other rapidly, and their friendship is soon established. As they arrive to Hogwarts, a crucial moment soon awaits, as the sorting hat, the determinator for which house the first-year students will join, is about to divide all the newcomers. The trio can soon ease their minds, as they all are selected for Gryffindor.

School starts, and magic classes take place on a daily basis. Harry soon learns that a professor of the school, Severus Snape, is not particularly fond of him. Exceeding the more theoretical classes, the new students also learn how to ride a broom. During their first lecture, a boy named Neville gets hurt and the professor asks all other students to stay on the ground while she takes the boy to the hospital. However, a bully from Slytherin named Draco Malfoy takes Neville’s remembrall and flies up in the sky, while challenging Potter to come and get it. Harry can’t resist but following, and catches Neville’s toy mid-air after Draco threw it from his broom. McGonagall sees the happening from her window and Harry fears punishment for the incident, but instead gets a recommendation to join Gryffindor’s quidditch-team, a game that can be compared to football in the sky, with your broom as the vehicle of transportation. As Malfoy feel trumped by Harry, he challenges Harry once again to a wizard duel the same night, but when Harry shows up Malfoy isn’t there. Harry almost gets in trouble, and when he tries to hide he discovers a three-headed dog who guards a hatch in a forbidden corridor of Hogwarts.

As the semester progresses, Halloween arrives and to the school’s surprise a troll has entered the corridors. Of course, all students are taken to their dormitories, but Harry and Ron notice that Hermione is missing. She is found alone with the troll in the girl’s washroom, but Ron and Harry manage to save her and stun the troll. Time flies by, and its soon time for Harry’s first match of Quidditch, which he, of course, manages well and catches the snitch.

It’s soon Christmas, and Harry gets his deceased father’s  cloak of invisibility as a Christmas gift, which allows him to explore the school as he wants, unseen. On his exploration of the castle, he finds the mirror of erised, a mirror which shows the person who looks into it what he or she desires the most. Christmas passes, and the trio, Potter, Hermione, and Ron, starts to investigate the relationship between a robbery at Gringotts, the bank, and the monster Harry found when he hid from trouble after being challenged by Malfoy. After more investigation, it turns out that the dog is guarding a hatch leading to the Sorcerer’s stone, one of the deathly hallows, that can give eternal life to its owner. Moreover, Harry and his companions learn that the stone is guarded so severely because Voldemort himself want to get hold of it.

Potter, who knows that Voldemort killed his parents, decides that he must get hold of the stone before Voldemort. The trio sneaks off one night to go to the forbidden corridor with the three-headed dog and manages to get past it. Getting through all the challenges to ultimately reach the stone, they meet Quirrell, one of the teachers of the school, which tells Harry he must die. Quirrell speaks with Harry, but suddenly a voice tells him that he wants to talk directly to Harry. As Quirrell removes his turban, the trio notices with fear how Voldemort’s face is on the back of Quirrell’s head. Voldemort demand Quirrel to kill Harry, but he fails miserably when he is severely burned and eventually dying from the contact with the boy.

Harry wakes up from unconsciousness in the hospital with headmaster Dumbledore by his side. He explains what has happened and that he was the one who saved Harry, and that they decided to destroy the stone. As Harry returns to the last banquet of the year, he realizes that Gryffindor is losing against Slytherin. However, Dumbledore gives away extra points to Gryffindor because of the trio’s success in stopping Voldemort from getting to the sorcerer’s stone, and Harry has to return home to the Dursley’s over the summer.

Harry Potter One: Audiobook Review

I did not consider myself a Harry Potter fan until quite recently actually. I saw the movies and thought they were quite entertaining, but never really took myself the time to pick up the books and read it. Therefore, I really saw the philosopher’s stone in an audiobook format as a great option to start my Harry Potter reading journey, and I could listen to it on my daily commute to my job.

When I started listening to the audiobook of philosopher’s stone I wasn’t really convinced. The first chapters went by, and I was not really sure if I understood what this Harry Potter hype was all about. However, the longer I came into the audiobook, the more excited and spellbound I became. Rowling really has the ability to create interesting characters, and paint the magic world she imagined within the heads of the readers or listeners in an astounding way. Everything is very thought through and interlinked in a clever and sophisticated way, but yet she manages to keep it simple enough for readers to enjoy the book without being perplexed.
After getting aquatinted with the plethora of characters involved in the book, Rowling keeps it all interesting by showcasing their flaws and uniqueness, and if that doesn’t keep it interesting enough for you, there are new characters brought up to keep the story entertaining.

All in all, Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone Audiobook leaves no-one dissatisfied. It’s full of engaging happenings and thoughtful fluid descriptions of environments that make it an impossibility to not enter JK Rowling’s world of magic. If you like to get really occupied by a book, and feeling like you want to use every awake hour to hear the next chapter, I think this audiobook might be something for you.

Narrator reviews

The Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone Audiobook has been narrated by 2 different narrators, Jim Dale and Stephen Fry. As many of those who are experienced audiobook-listeners know, the story an audiobook entails might be of high quality, but if the narrator is performing bad, even the best of books can become a disappointment. Therefore, I wanted to give you some insights on the two different narrators, so you can decide which you find most appealing to listen to during the 9 hour long audiobook.

Jim Dale

Jim Dale is an English actor, narrator, singer and more. He’s been playing theatre in leading roles on broadway, and participated in many movies. These skills combined makes Dale an outstanding narrator, as he has so much experience in putting himself in different roles, and it can definitely be experienced through listening to the first Harry Potter audiobook. Dale has an incredible ability to capture the voices of different characters and making them distinguishable. He also manages to match the voice with their character and persona, which makes the whole listening experience even better. Given how many different characters there are in the audiobook of The Philosopher’s Stone and in the Harry Potter series in general, his performance is even more remarkable. Even though Jim Dale is from England, he reads the book with a US accent, which might be worth mentioning if you have any specific preferences when it comes to that. A brief sample of his narrating can be found below.

 Stephen Fry

In similarity to Jim Dale, Stephen Fry is also known for acting. He started his career within comedy, and later on acted in golden globe award nominated films and tv series. Apart from narrating the whole harry potter series, he also did voiceovers for video games and animated series. It becomes obvious that Fry has a plethora of experiences making him very suitable for narrating, which is easily identified in the critique of his work. Like his American counterpart Dale, Fry also have an astonishing ability to bring characters to life through his voice, and given his British accent, this might be the way one should enjoy the harry potter series, as it takes place in the United Kingdom after all. Some people have described his narrating performance as reading with an actor’s skill, but with a fan’s enthusiasm, which can’t be argued to be anything but a perfect combination. Listen to a brief example of his narration below.

Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone Glossary

As magic as the Harry Potter series are, they do come with quite some terminology and specific words that becomes essential to know to experience the story in it’s right way. Therefore we decided to also add some of the most essential glossary, so you can listen to the audiobook without any confusion.

 Animagus

Some of the wizards and witches of the Harry Potter series have the ability to transform themselves to an animal. In the audiobook of the philosopher’s stone, McGonagall can transform herself to a cat, which can be read about right in the start of the book.

Gringotts

Is the wizards and witches magic bank in London. Harry visits the bank in the first book, and is positively surprised that his parents left him a fortune.

 Muggle

As it is the first book, you might not be aquatinted  with this word. This is what those who can use magic call the non-magical people. Hermione Granger is for example half-muggle, as only one of her parents had magical powers.

 Snitch

A small ball of gold with wings that is extremely fast. In a match of Quidditch, the flying broom version of football, the seeker’s goal is to catch the snitch, and therefore end the game. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone, Harry manages to catch the snitch in his first game.

Conclusion

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone is an amazing audiobook and story, narrated by what some would argue is the best narrators in the world. The book provides a captivating story with intriguing characters that just keep evolving throughout the book. Therefore, we have given Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone Audiobook 5 out of 5 stars. I sincerely hope this article could give you the insights necessary to get you started listening to the audiobook. If you think there is anything we missed to bring up regarding the audiobook or the book itself, please leave a comment below with your suggestions.