Abridged? Silent mode?

I should probably have bought the abridged version, going against my principle of only reading unabridged, because the pieces of text that actually don't belong with the story are easy to cut out without hindering comprehension, the reader wouldn't miss anything important (is anyone really interested in the history of the sewage system of the city of Paris?). However, this is the version I bought and listened to, so this is what I'll review. And since there are tons of comments on the actual book in the reviews of the English language editions, I'll limit my review to the narration. I don't know if narrators are supposed to read before the books they're going to narrate, but I would guess Silvia Cecchini does that. She certainly knows what she's reading, she gives everything the right intonation, she's not 'flat' as a narrator. But she's too fast. Always. At least for my taste. I appreciate the fact that the books she narrates are cheap and I understand why (no studio is involved in the recording), but I don't appreciate the end result. Basically, she works at home. And while the occasional ambulance siren is inevitable, the vibrations of the mobile phone are not. Being deprived of one's mobile phone while working may be unpleasant, but there are options such as the silent mode. On the other hand, I don't have many alternatives to jumping whenever her phone vibrates while she works and I listen to the recording...

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