Join Us for The Magic Mountain

[00:00:00]Hi, my name is Pat and this is my channel Book Chat with Pat and I'm glad that you're here. Today in this video I'm going to be telling you about a reading event that is going to be taking place in the late fall. And the reason that several of us will be giving making these announcement videos or invitation videos >> [clears throat] >> is that we're proposing a reading event of a very long novel and we wanted to give people plenty of time to plan in advance.

[00:00:39]Two years ago I participated in the most wonderful small group reading experience.

[00:00:49]A group of five other BookTubers joined me in a I think two-month I don't know if we did over two months or three months reading of James Joyce's Ulysses.

[00:01:03]We came to call our group the Ulysses Six and we had the most magnificent group reading experience.

[00:01:12]And we have stayed in touch. We've read a couple of things together. We also read The Brothers Karamazov together about a year after Ulysses and we've been talking recently about what we might like to read next. Well, we've decided on the magnum opus of Thomas Mann's career and that is The Magic Mountain. We are proposing a small group reading of this novel in the months of November and December of 2026.

[00:01:52]And we're just starting to talk about this now on our channels so that if this is something that you might want to join in on, you will have plenty of time to plan for that. Because you can't just pick up a gigantic novel like this and say I'm going to read this today. We realize that people have schedules and reading events. So we wanted to talk about this several months in advance so that if this was something that you thought you might like to join in on, you would know about it well well in advance.

[00:02:31]Now um >> [clears throat] >> the the Ulysses 6 has now become eight.

[00:02:38]So there are eight of us who are planning to read The Magic Mountain together and and we love it if if you would join us as well.

[00:02:51]So [clears throat] far joining me will be Greg at Another Bibliophile Reads, Roy at Roy Reads Anything, Alan at Big Hard Books and Classics, Debs at Rainer Reads Stuff, Will at Will Chambers, Aaron at Aaron Facers. Plus we are so fortunate to have been joined by David from the channel Polyglot Reading English. He has also created an entire series of videos on The Magic Mountain.

[00:03:35]He has another channel just devoted to the Thomas Mann Project.

[00:03:42]So we are really really fortunate to have David joining us as well. So the Ulysses 6 has now become the Magic Mountain.

[00:03:55]I think now we are the Magic Mountain eight, and hopefully some of you will be joining us as well.

[00:04:03]We [clears throat] wanted to invite others to join us in the reading of this 20th century masterpiece over the course of two months, November and December.

[00:04:16]For some members of this group, this will be a first-time read. For others, it will be a reread. It doesn't matter if you've read this before, if you've never read this before, if you're coming to it for the first time, all that is required is an interest to explore this great work of 20th century German literature.

[00:04:46]Thomas Mann's great novel, The Magic Mountain, is a German novel that was first published in 1924 in German and in 1927 in English. The novel opens in pre-World War I Europe in 1904.

[00:05:08]It's the story of the young Hans Castorp, who undertakes a journey to visit his cousin who is being treated for tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Davos in the Swiss Alps. A short visit, I think the visit was supposed to be about 3 weeks long, it turns into a much longer stay. I believe nearly 7 years, during which Hans Castorp meets various characters who expose him to all kinds of issues and ideas involving sickness and health, politics, philosophy, art, music, love, culture, and the very nature of time itself. The novel is generally considered to be one of the great European novels of the 20th century.

[00:06:16]It's a long novel, which is why we have developed a schedule for reading it over 2 months at the end of 2026.

[00:06:28]Greg at another bibliophile reads has set up this schedule on his Discord channel as well.

[00:06:38]Um I will include the schedule in the notes to this video, so you can see what this will entail. Um we are just talking about this now so that you can plan for the future if you think you might like to join us, and I will certainly be talking about this um in the future as we get closer to November. Um you can just leave me a comment in the notes below or in in the in the comments below if you think that this is something that you might like to get in on. Um [snorts] as we get closer to November, um I will also share the information for Greg's Discord channel. Um there [clears throat] are several English translations of the novel that are readily available today.

[00:07:37]And there's another one that will be forthcoming, but uh from my understanding, it's not going to be out in time for this reading. Uh but one of the newest ones has just been published.

[00:07:52]I'm just going to show you the the translations that I have. I first read uh The Magic Mountain um when I was an undergraduate, uh and I read it in this edition. This is the H.T. Lowe Porter translation.

[00:08:11]Uh this is the no-frills Modern Library College edition. Um I first read this in 1978, uh and I've had this edition since then.

[00:08:26]Um I don't think I can revisit this edition, though, because the font size just isn't conducive to my aging eyes.

[00:08:37]Um I may have read from this edition again in in graduate school in the uh early '80s. I'm not sure if this was the edition that I reread.

[00:08:48]I also have the um uh uh Vintage International edition. This is the John E. Woods edition, which was translated, I believe, in 1996.

[00:09:04]The schedule that Greg has put together uh refers to this edition.

[00:09:13]And And again, this is the John E. Woods edition. And the new edition that has that just came out this past spring is the Simon Pare translation, and this is published by Oxford World's Classics.

[00:09:31]And isn't that a beautiful edition?

[00:09:34]I I'm going to give this a try on this reread. The addition that is coming out, I think I think David at Polyglot Reading told me that it probably won't be out until March. That is published by W.W.

[00:09:55]Norton.

[00:09:56]Um but, you know, there are at least these three um translations that will be available um to uh to to all of us.

[00:10:08]Um >> [clears throat] >> I will, as I said, I'll be talking about this again as we get closer to November uh and you will certainly be seeing other announcement or invitation videos coming out this week. And I hope that you will consider joining us on on this adventure. Let me know in the comments if you think you might be interested, and you're not committing yourself to anything at at this at this point. As always, I thank you for watching. I hope that you're doing well. I'll speak with you again soon. Take care.