I think I told this story in another thread here, but after I gave up on Star Wars books mid 90s, I went to go work at Barnes and Noble where the entire staff, minus myself, were into "The Wheel of Time" series. Peer pressure being what it is, I started reading them too. I really enjoyed the series, but it was still being written (still is!) and so I never finished it. Each book is about 800 pages in hardcover, and approaching or over 1000 in paperback.
5 years later my wife and I are about to go a 16 hour round trip road trip and we go to the library to see if there are any good audio books to take with us. I see "The Eye of the World" which is the first book in the series and so we grab it. It's abridged to 2 90 minute tapes- so 3 hours. It's a long book, but I don't have a sense of how abridged this will be. Most of my other experience with audiobook abridgements are from the 2 tape versions of the Star Wars bantam books I read in the mid 90s and then listened to later. (It's amazing when you listen to an abridgement just how much they are able to shorten it without noticably losing whole scenes or chapters).
To make a long story short (too late!), the 2 hour tape version was terrible and I found myself apologizing to my wife for having so strongly recommended it. It made me think, "have my tastes changed so much in the past few years?" Upon returning it to the library, I saw that they had a 27 disc, 30+ hour version of it on CD. I started to listen to it on my commute to work and found everything I had ever loved to still be in the book, albeit only in the unabridged version. 3 hours from 30+, meaning the 2 tape version was a mere 10% of the length of the full version.