I also like Dawn Treader the best of the seven stories. I wonder how realistically the sea voyage will be presented when Anrdrew Adamson makes his movie of the book.
The reason why the readings of the Narnia books were only about one hour on the vinyl LP's was probably to reduce the size and expense of the package. Remember how much larger the records were than today's CD's. The LP's had nice artwork on the covers-- the same pictures as on the covers of the old paperback editions but much larger. A set of eight records (or fourteen if they devoted two hours to each book) instead of four would have been more expensive and would have taken a huge amount of shelf space, not to mention the cost of shipping. However, when the same set came out on CD and cassette nothing had changed except that three more books were added-- The Horse and His Boy, The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle. But there was also only an hour devoted to each of these books. We had at least twice as much story with Focus on the Famly, but today there is the advantage of the smaller format of the CD's, although the old vinyl still sounds great-- even after 25 - 30 years.
Larry W.