How to make really tedious traffic seem almost bearable

For some idiotic reason I got started listening to Middlemarch in the car.  Is this like the largest word count of any book in the English language?  Will I be able to keep the CDs from the library long enough to finish it?

The reader confounds me--she goes on and on and on, never needing to clear her throat or correct a misreading.  Never seeming to get tired at the endless roundabouts and dissolutions and meanderous poeticity that the author tacks on to decorate a rather slim story.  It reminds me of an illuminated manuscript--a lot of style and very little substance.

For all that griping, I'm still listening to it.  The CD player does have an off switch--I know where it is.