Selecting an audiobook was a rather harder decision than I’d imagined. I’ve been listening to a bunch of samples, so many samples that I probably could have finished a complete book by now.

Some appear like they’d be excellent, but after listening to the sample, I know I could not bear to listen to the narrator for hours and hours and hours (and hours). And there are some books that I don’t want to ruin by listening to them .

This really is one of those occasions where perfect is the enemy of good. I feel like I want something epic, impressive and challenging for this item, but maybe I should just be easing into it?

Audiobooks I’ve been considering the following (in no particular order):

Haruki Murakami: 1Q84 46 hrs and 50 mins

David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest 56 hrs and 19 mins (!)

Elena Ferrante: My Brilliant Friend 12 hrs and 39 mins 

Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall 24 hrs and 15 mins

Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black 17 hrs and 12 mins

J G Ballard: High Rise 6 hrs and 34 mins

Anthony Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement 21 hrs and 3 mins

Tim Winton: Dirt Music 11 hrs and 44 mins

Donna Tartt: The Goldfinch 32 hrs and 30 mins

Donna Tartt: The Secret History 22 hrs and 3 mins

J.K. Rowling: The Casual Vacancy 17 hrs and 49 mins

Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin 6 hrs and 6 mins

Lionel Shriver: We Need to Talk About Kevin 6 hrs and 23 mins

Christos Tsiolkas: The Slap 15 hrs and 42 mins

At the moment, based on how much I can tolerate the narration, I’m leaning toward 1Q84, Blind Assassin (the shortest!), We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Slap, Beyond Black or The Casual Vacancy.

Argh! That’s still too many choices! This is the epitome of analysis paralysis – all this effort expended and I haven’t made a decision yet. You see why I want to make an effort to change this in 2017.

Maybe I should just pick one of these from a hat?

And while on the audiobook topic – I’m kind of perplexed, what on earth do you do with your eyes while listening to a book? How does one concentrate? I’m sure the answers to these mysteries will be revealed if I can actually make that decision to pull the trigger on something!