>>You aren't alone. Newsweek has a regular sidebar piece in the front of the magazine where published authors are asked to recommend five books and name one book they feel they should have read and haven't. One of the recent authors -- sorry, I am blanking on his name -- chose "The Magic Mountain", saying he had tried it several times and never got more than 50 pages in.
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>Ok, well, I feel a bit better having outdone a professional by about 100 pages. Although, I disagree with him that it's something I should have read but haven't. What I should have done was thrown a wake and given it last rites. Believe me, the first 150 pages was interminable. And remember, I managed to read Gravity's Rainbow 3 times without too much discernable psychological damage. For all I know, that may be a world record.
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With the possible exceptions of Pynchon and his editor ;-) All I can say is you're a better man than I, Gungha Dhun. I have tried to get through Pynchon books two or three times with no success at all. Maybe I am just incapable of figuring out what he's up to.

"Last rites" -- good one. As it happens, and as I think I already mentioned, I am currently rereading "True Confessions" by John Gregory Dunne. The two main characters are two Irish brothers, one a priest and one a cop (played by Robert DeNiro and Robert Duvall, respectively, in the movie). There is some great stuff about the Catholic church. For instance, a priest who was put into sort of a home for daft priests at a young age. Among other things he did was break into "Carry Me Back To Old Virginny" during a requiem mass (lol). Unlike Mann or Pynchon, Dunne has a nice easy writing style that is easy to follow. But not incapable of stopping you in your tracks with a name like Shake Hands McCarthy.