There's a lovely and eccentric quiz show on the BBC called Only Connect. Last year the host as part of her bit to fill time tried to fill it with reading excerpts from Paradise Lost. It was funny, and the in-joke I think was to remind us all of what Samuel Johnson once said of it:

> "Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is."

"working through it" does indeed seem like the right phrasing from what little I've been exposed to. Good luck!