La Tonya Jordan’s Reviews > The Magic Mountain > Status Update

It is a difficult read. But, it is a pleasure to read this novel.

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But bear in mind, the mountain's mad with spells tonight,
And should a will-o'-wisp decide your way to light,
Beware - its lead may prove deceptive

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"Behold bright flames illuminated!" A merry club has congregated."
As he said it, he smiled his delicate, dry smile, but kept on strolling toward his seat, where he was received with a barrage of fragile pellets that burst as they struck, dousing their victim in a spray of perfume.

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"And so we've had Christmas, and we marked the New Year, and now Mardi Gras is coming. Then it will soon be Palm Sunday - do they bake special pastries here? - then Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost, which is only six weeks later, and then before you know it, it's the longest day, Midsummer Night, you see, and soon you're into autumn."

Hans Castorp and Herr Settembrini clash at the Mardi Gras party given at the sanatorium over the use of first names. Settembrini insists on formal pronouns appropriate to the educated West. Hans Castorp feels a closeness to Settembrini for all he has done to educate him about the world and wants to use his first name with all his heart. The Mardi Gras party is a success. Everyone is dressed in custom even the staff.

I am truly enjoying this book. It requires you to read.

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Mardi Gras was upon them, and Hans Castorp inquired of the one-year-old what that was like up here.

Explanation:

The one-year-old is Joachim who has been at the sanatorium for a year. You get this information by reading the previous sentences and putting the sentences together. This is called reading. I love this novel.

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The dates, however, had their own delicate individuality - on the whole these life spans had been strikingly short, the difference in years between birth and demise averaging little more than twenty.

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She was all alone in the world, too, having left her husband and children - as she freely admitted to the cousins - for another man (still had a boy), only to be left in turn by her lover.

Castorp's arrival up here; when you wrote the date, you added another year.

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With Petersburg as home base, he had traveled the length and breadth of Russia, visiting insured factories and ferreting out those in dubious financial condition - because statistics showed that fires occurred most often in factories where business was going badly.

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Hans Castorp disputed this emphatically - his cousin was talking almost like Settembrini, with no respect or reverence for suffering.

Sister Alfreda had already packed her bag and departed from the Berghof, having received an urgent call to report to another moribund patient at a different sanatorium.

"It is written, however: let the dead bury their dead," the Italian said.