This book is tough: there is no getting around it and I defy anyone who has read it to have breezed through it. It is however a fantastic book that combines fairytale magic with philosophy and reminds me of a rather more complex work by classic German author, Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha, Gertrude, Knulp...) It is overlong however and this can be offputting - the premise is really simple but the book enormous. Despite this, Magic Mountain remains an original and evocative piece of writing that leaves you feeling glad that you took the jounrney.

I've some sympathy for the reviewer who gave this book a one star review but on the other hand I usually enjoy this sort of thing, and I'm enjoying this though not as much as I'd hoped. I suppose it all depends on your 'bag'. What's it about, then? A healthy German engineering graduate, Hans Castorp, who is ignorant of many things except engineering goes to visit his cousin in a Swiss TB sanatorium just before the first world war (at Davos!) and ironically the visit makes him ill and he becomes a patient. We then get a very detailed acount of his life there, his obsessions and most interestingly the conversations he has about the state of the world with a number of the guests. In truth not a lot happens otherwise although I'm only now about halfway through so who knows? I was looking forward to Mann reflecting the issues in Europe on the verge of the First World War through a bunch of idle rich characters living at altitude in Switzerland but this aspect of it seems a bit thin to me so far. I guess if you like the works of W G Sebald, Roberto Bolano or James Joyce et al or are interested in Swiss sanatoria before the First World War this will be on your reading list but if you're more a James Patterson, James Ellroy, Danielle Steele sort of person, it won't.

At the risk of being labelled a Philistine, I declare that this book is one of the most insufferably boring tomes that has ever made it onto my bedside table. I admit that I only struggled my way through the first 170 pages, but that was enough to convince me that I should not waste any more minutes of my precious life wading through any more of this drivel.I know, I have also been chastised for criticising modern art in the same way. Tracey Emin's "Unmade Bed" and Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" will just have to live in the pile of junk that I fail to understand.I realise that I am in the minority, as most reviewers and professors of literature believe this to be a masterpiece, and probably the best book to come out of Germany in the twentieth century. Then again, Hans Christian Anderson's boy who recognised the nakedness of his Emperor as those around him admired the splendour and wonderful colours of their leader's new clothes, was also in the minority.Perhaps, then, I shouldn't feel too bad about my opinion of this amazing piece of creative writing. It may also explain why English literature was the only `O' Level that I failed, despite having been a prolific reader all of my life. It just happened that the books that were chosen for my studies for those exams also bored me to tears.