On my own mountain tour to Mount Hood and Crater Lake in Oregon late this August, I lugged about a door-stopper, hardcover edition of The Magic Mountain, translated by John E Woods from the original German. 
It was written by Mann when he was in his fifties around the time of WWI.
After reviewing the erudite introduction by AS Byatt and being admonished that “hurry makes it seem intolerably slow and overloaded”, I proceeded to skim through the book. I slowed down at times to enjoy the elegant descriptions from the omniscient narrator and to worry about whether I was properly appreciating or understanding some of the allegorical narratives.
As a person with medical training, I found the details of the treatment of tuberculosis in the pre-antibiotic era by rest cures in high altitude sanatoriums interesting. The residents must submit to the passage of time at altitude and occasional radical lung surgeries for any hope of survival. Similar to an eldercare institution of today, they are surrounded by the dying and the possibility of the futility of the treatment.
As I sat in a chaise-lounge at 6000 feet overlooking Crater Lake, I wondered if I would have ever mastered the correct way of folding the blankets over myself in preparation for the afternoon rest cure. Mann proposes in the character Castorp, the phenomenon of illness as a refuge from the challenges and disappointments of real life. Castop’s cousin is a victim of his patriotism and the eventual recrudescence of his disease. The other characters in the sanatorium are instructive caricatures engaging for example in romantic difficulties or philosophical struggles over humanism versus religious faith. The narrator gently mocks their characteristics.
And so I hurtled to the end of the novel with little empathy for the protagonist Castorp but many moments of astonishment and bemusement at the use of language and the skill of the translator.