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Buddenbrooks 75%

Decline is setting in.
Thomas involves himself in shaky/shady business deal. His son, Johann, only interested in music--obviously an incapable future leader.Tony's son-in-law is a criminal. After fires, he sells off insurance policies to unsuspecting third parties who learn after they buy the policies of the fires.  Jail time. Elisabeth, Thomas's mother, dying of pneumonia.  The business is 100 years old, but it is quite impossible to imagine it will last another 100.  End near.

(I'm finding this slow decline section a bit boring perhaps because I am not at all a music expert.  Little Johann with the music master and his mother . . . yawn.

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