Thomas Mann's _Buddenbrooks_ is the last sprawling 19th century family epic

Isn't this cover so ugly?

I have rarely loved a book as much as I am loving _Buddenbrooks._ I meant to read it years ago, but I always kept getting derailed by thinking, "Hmm, if I'm going to read Mann, I should really read The Magic Mountain."

Well that was silly. Buddenbrooks is its own thing: a novel about the slow decline of a German mercantile famil…