Sensational Snippets: The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann

I am reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and I came across this:

Quite a bit of reading went on at the International Sanatorium Berghof, both in the common lounging areas and on private balconies – this was particularly true of newcomers and short-termers, since residents of many months or even years had long since learned how to ravage time without diverting or employing their minds, had become virtuosi at putting time behind them, and declared openly that only clumsy bunglers in the art needed a book to hang on to. At most they might leave a book lying on their lap or within reach on a table – that sufficed for them to find their reading needs taken care of. The sanatorium library was a polyglot affair with many illustrated works – an expanded version of the sort of thing that serves to entertain patients in a dentist’s…