February 2020 Wrap-Up: Over 12,000 Pages Read?!?!
Hey hi hello friends, and welcome to my blog!
February was a hard month for me, I'm not going to lie. I was having a lot of medical problems that kept me from being able to do, well...anything really.
On the bright side, I had a lot of downtime for reading! And oh boy, when I say that February was the best reading month I've had in years? I'm not even kidding! I read fourteen novels this month, and I honestly don't know how many manga. Hang on, calculating...thirty-seven. THIRTY-SEVEN MANGA VOLUMES. I finished an entire series! Plus I fully caught up on The Promised Neverland and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, so I'm reading the weekly chapter updates. And they're killing me! But I'll get more in depth about that tomorrow.
So, fourteen novels? Thirty-seven manga volumes? Better get started.
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Novels
1. Tell Me How You Really Feel by Amirah Mae Safi
Star rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Page count: 320 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 1 to Feb. 2
Goodreads thoughts: It was...okay
I really connected to Sana, despite the fact that I for sure as hell was not the perfect student, and definitely not the perfect daughter. But the expectations she placed on herself were very similar to mine in high school. And the cheerleading aspect was spot on. The guilt that courses through you when you get injured and have to sit out of the routines, it’s awful and I really appreciate how the author managed to capture that so authentically.
But I really did not like Rachel. Like I appreciated her character development and the redemption she got in the end, but she just rubbed me the wrong way. This whole beef with Sana started because of a miscommunication on Rachel’s part, and she just...didn’t care to try and fix it? I don’t know it just bothered me to no end. I really think Sana deserved more than Rachel was throwing her. Also Rachel never stopped thinking in movie terms and I know that film studies majors are completely obsessed but she seemed to only know 1940s Hollywood starlets and never once mentioned other actresses from different parts of the world, so she seemed kind of fake to me. Also her complete serious treatment of Helen of Troy being the selfish vapid princess ~really~ ticked me off.
The plot itself was pretty cute, and I feel like this book would transition really easily into film. I hope it does, because I would pay so much money to see this in theaters. Despite my dislike of Rachel, I thoroughly enjoyed myself while reading this.
2. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Star rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Page count: 491 pages
Day(s) read: Jan. 17 to Feb. 6
Goodreads thoughts: It was eh? I mean the humor was spot on, and definitely my favorite part of the book hands down, but it honestly felt like a bit of a chore to pick it up and read it. I pretty much skimmed the last twenty pages or so. But I am glad that I read it, overall it was a good book I was just bored. Definitely a me thing, I just don’t think Neil Gaiman’s writing style is for me (I haven’t read anything else by Terry Pratchett so I can’t say for sure about his books)
3. The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan (Kane Chronicles #1)
Star rating: 5 out of 5 stars (reread)
Page count: 516 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 6
Goodreads thoughts: n/a
4. Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean
Star rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 384 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 10
Goodreads thoughts: I am so shook this was absolutely incredible.
Not only am I just an absolute slut for Japanese lore and mythology, I also can really never say no to the very specific trope of “cold and harsh heir to a kingdom/willful and proud suitor that must win their affection” it just gets me every time. It’s like one of the only romance tropes that I actively enjoy reading.
The way this book flowed I was able to read it in about six hours, something that I only ever accomplish with old favorites. I found myself so invested in all of the characters and was moved by every development made. I cried in frustration and then in joy and then in anger and then in sadness. I was so hoping that this would be a series and that I would be able to get more of Taro and Mari but I’m not mad at the ending, and the way Jean explained it made the ending more palatable, even with all of the suffering.
I hope that Jean writes more stories centered around Japan and its culture. I’ll be sure to read them if she does.
5. The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides by Aeschylus
Star rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 335 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 6 to Feb. 10
Goodreads thoughts: I read these as a part of my Greek literature class, but I’ve read the Eumenides on its own before this. After reading all three plays I can say now that the Eumenides is my favorite. The parallelism to Athens’ rising democracy is masterfully crafted, especially considering Aeschylus wrote the Oresteia six years before Athens’ democratic reforms occurred and their empire began. I do hope I can one day see the play in person for myself.
6. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
Star rating: n/a (since its technically nonfiction I won't rate it)
Page count: 784 pages (However I only read certain excerpts of it)
Day(s) read: Jan. 18 to Feb. 18
Goodreads thoughts: Though Thucydides had a tendency to over detail everything I still found his account of the wars rather intriguing. One day I’ll have to get another copy with the original Greek so I can compare translations.
7. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Star rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 496 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 16 to Feb. 22
Goodreads thoughts: This was just absolutely incredible in so many ways. This book was one of those rare stories where I knew I was going to love it before I even picked it up, but it truly blew me away by how deeply it resonated inside. I hardly knew anything about Korea and Japan in the twentieth century from school. I knew the American side of WWII, and that was pretty much it. I certainly didn’t know the hardships and discrimination that Koreans faced in Japan. Just goes to show that history is never as clear cut as you are taught it to be.
This generational story following a Korean family living in Japan throughout the 1900s is just truly remarkable. Lee managed to take a hundred years of history and weave a story so intricate and interconnected that it felt as if I was watching the years tick by on a screen. I think the most captivating part of this novel is the fact that all of the characters seemed so incredibly human. They screwed up. They made mistakes. They lied and were cheated and survived in the most brutal of ways. And yet not once did I feel a disconnect from them. The attachment I felt to this family is frankly astonishing. Normally I have little patience for morally gray characters, as odd as that sounds. I tend to get annoyed when characters make decisions that are so glaringly stupid. But instead of annoyance and anger during those moments in the story, I felt an overwhelming sense of sympathy (which I know was the intention). This family worked its way into my heart and then lodged itself there. They pay rent and everything. They aren’t leaving any time soon.
8. Vampires in the Lemon Grove: and Other Stories by Karen Russell
Star rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 258 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 21
Goodreads thoughts: The stories were below average, I think. The writing was interesting, in a “this is so weird and I understand nothing” kind of way. A few of the stories did give me a sense of unease that I would expect from a horror collection, but most of them were just odd. The last one was the creepiest to me—scarecrows freak me out so I suppose that makes sense. But mostly I was just bored reading this collection.
9. The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone by Sophocles
Star rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Page count: 259 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 23 to Feb. 25
Goodreads thoughts: n/a - another set of plays that were for my Greek literature class. Oedipus just has some issues man. But Sophocles' commentary on women and democracy are actually quite fascinating, especially in a modern light.
10. The Spy by Paulo Coelho
Star rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Page count: 208 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 27
Goodreads thoughts: Yet another masterpiece by Coelho, though not my favorite. Mata Hari’s life was full of suffering and hardship, and I’m glad that her story has been told so many times, instead of fading out of history like so many others. Also, as always, Coelho’s writing managed to completely overtake my senses. I haven’t found a single other author that writes like he does.
11. Medea by Euripides
Star rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 59 pages (lmao so smol)
Day(s) read: Feb. 24
Goodreads thoughts: n/a - one of my favorite plays from Ancient Greece, because of Euripides' take on women, which was very controversial back when it was written. Medea may be psychotic but she's a woman of action!
12. Avatar: The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Lee and Michael Dante DiMartino (The Kyoshi Novels #1)
Star rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Page count: 442 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 24 to Feb. 25
Goodreads thoughts: I??? Loved this????????
It was so nice returning to one of my favorite worlds. I’ve been a fan of Avatar since the beginning, never missing an episode premiere since the pilot fifteen years ago (FIFTEEN YEARS AGO GUYS. IM OLD). Kyoshi was always my favorite incarnation of the Avatar, with her brashness and her take no shit attitude. Any episode that featured her always ended up being one of my favorites. So getting a whole book series about her?? Amazing.
I appreciated the accuracy to the world most of all. I know that this was co-written with one of the producers of the show so I wasn’t expecting anything less, but the attention to detail just really made my heart sing. Things like the importance of hair in the Fire Nation, and the slow decline of the Southern Water Tribe. And all the mentions of Kyoshi’s height! That was so great.
I can’t wait to read the second installment. Since we only know like two instances of Kyoshi’s life and they both happen later on down the road, I’m excited to see what adventures will happen next.
13. The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty (The Daevabad Trilogy #1)
Star rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 569 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 25 to Feb. 27
Goodreads thoughts: Oh my freaking goodness was this incredible. I’ve always been fascinated by Arabic folklore and mythology and this book did NOT disappoint holy cow.
The overall setup for the plot reminded me a lot of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson: a girl discovers she belongs to an entirely different class of people (or race, in this case) with magical powers and is recruited to help rebel against the current ruler of her people, someone who treats them rather poorly. The twists and turns this story keep pulling out led me to binge reading most of it. Each of the characters actually all had true personality and motivations, and I felt myself really torn between who I was rooting for, who I thought was in the right. Well, until the end that is. That’s when it became rather easy for me to make my choice.
I can’t wait to read the sequel.
14. Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #5)
Star rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 208 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 27
Goodreads thoughts: Incredible, amazing, outmatched, unlike anything I’ve seen before, etc etc.
This is one of my favorite series of all time and this installment absolutely did not disappoint. I would say it’s either my second or third favorite of the series—In an Absent Dream is by far number one, and then this is tied with Every Heart a Doorway (and then Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Beneath the Sugar Sky in last place, but still a favorite of mine).
The Moors is just so fascinating, and I’ll be honest I freaking love Jill as a character. She’s completely psychotic and it’s great.
Manga
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba vol. 11-19 by Koyoharu Gotouge
No star rating
Total page count: 1,756 pages
I am now fully caught up with the manga series, as it is ongoing
The Promised Neverland vol. 14-17 by Kaiu Shirai
No star rating
Total page count: 792 pages
I am now fully caught up with the manga series, as it is ongoing
Hikaru no Go vol. 1-23 by Yumi Hotta
No star rating
Total page count: 4,416 pages (yeah, I'm not kidding)
Goodreads thoughts: Well, that ending certainly crushed me to little pieces. But the very last panel gave me a ridiculous amount of hope. I think that Hikaru truly did Sai justice in the tournament. Who would've thought I'd get so invested in a shonen series all about Go. Hotta-sensei really just pulled the right heartstrings with me, I guess. (Also, the anime is hilariously-90s art style, and it makes me wheeze every time I watch an episode.)
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Total page count: 12,234 pages (are you kidding???? Well, that's it. I've peaked. Might as well give up now)
Favorite book of February: Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean
Least favorite book of February: Vampires in the Lemon Grove: and Other Stories by Karen Russell
DNF'd books this month: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Walker
Unfinished books this month: Gates of Fire by Stephen Pressfield
Medea by Kerry Greenwood
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What a wild ride, am I right? Over twelve thousand pages read!! God bless manga, honestly. And even taking all of the manga away, I still read a ridiculous amount of books this month, and nearly all of them were amazing! I'm shook, really.
February was a hard month for me, I'm not going to lie. I was having a lot of medical problems that kept me from being able to do, well...anything really.
On the bright side, I had a lot of downtime for reading! And oh boy, when I say that February was the best reading month I've had in years? I'm not even kidding! I read fourteen novels this month, and I honestly don't know how many manga. Hang on, calculating...thirty-seven. THIRTY-SEVEN MANGA VOLUMES. I finished an entire series! Plus I fully caught up on The Promised Neverland and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, so I'm reading the weekly chapter updates. And they're killing me! But I'll get more in depth about that tomorrow.
So, fourteen novels? Thirty-seven manga volumes? Better get started.
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Novels
1. Tell Me How You Really Feel by Amirah Mae Safi
Star rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Page count: 320 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 1 to Feb. 2
Goodreads thoughts: It was...okay
I really connected to Sana, despite the fact that I for sure as hell was not the perfect student, and definitely not the perfect daughter. But the expectations she placed on herself were very similar to mine in high school. And the cheerleading aspect was spot on. The guilt that courses through you when you get injured and have to sit out of the routines, it’s awful and I really appreciate how the author managed to capture that so authentically.
But I really did not like Rachel. Like I appreciated her character development and the redemption she got in the end, but she just rubbed me the wrong way. This whole beef with Sana started because of a miscommunication on Rachel’s part, and she just...didn’t care to try and fix it? I don’t know it just bothered me to no end. I really think Sana deserved more than Rachel was throwing her. Also Rachel never stopped thinking in movie terms and I know that film studies majors are completely obsessed but she seemed to only know 1940s Hollywood starlets and never once mentioned other actresses from different parts of the world, so she seemed kind of fake to me. Also her complete serious treatment of Helen of Troy being the selfish vapid princess ~really~ ticked me off.
The plot itself was pretty cute, and I feel like this book would transition really easily into film. I hope it does, because I would pay so much money to see this in theaters. Despite my dislike of Rachel, I thoroughly enjoyed myself while reading this.
2. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Star rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Page count: 491 pages
Day(s) read: Jan. 17 to Feb. 6
Goodreads thoughts: It was eh? I mean the humor was spot on, and definitely my favorite part of the book hands down, but it honestly felt like a bit of a chore to pick it up and read it. I pretty much skimmed the last twenty pages or so. But I am glad that I read it, overall it was a good book I was just bored. Definitely a me thing, I just don’t think Neil Gaiman’s writing style is for me (I haven’t read anything else by Terry Pratchett so I can’t say for sure about his books)
3. The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan (Kane Chronicles #1)
Star rating: 5 out of 5 stars (reread)
Page count: 516 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 6
Goodreads thoughts: n/a
4. Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean
Star rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 384 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 10
Goodreads thoughts: I am so shook this was absolutely incredible.
Not only am I just an absolute slut for Japanese lore and mythology, I also can really never say no to the very specific trope of “cold and harsh heir to a kingdom/willful and proud suitor that must win their affection” it just gets me every time. It’s like one of the only romance tropes that I actively enjoy reading.
The way this book flowed I was able to read it in about six hours, something that I only ever accomplish with old favorites. I found myself so invested in all of the characters and was moved by every development made. I cried in frustration and then in joy and then in anger and then in sadness. I was so hoping that this would be a series and that I would be able to get more of Taro and Mari but I’m not mad at the ending, and the way Jean explained it made the ending more palatable, even with all of the suffering.
I hope that Jean writes more stories centered around Japan and its culture. I’ll be sure to read them if she does.
5. The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides by Aeschylus
Star rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 335 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 6 to Feb. 10
Goodreads thoughts: I read these as a part of my Greek literature class, but I’ve read the Eumenides on its own before this. After reading all three plays I can say now that the Eumenides is my favorite. The parallelism to Athens’ rising democracy is masterfully crafted, especially considering Aeschylus wrote the Oresteia six years before Athens’ democratic reforms occurred and their empire began. I do hope I can one day see the play in person for myself.
6. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
Star rating: n/a (since its technically nonfiction I won't rate it)
Page count: 784 pages (However I only read certain excerpts of it)
Day(s) read: Jan. 18 to Feb. 18
Goodreads thoughts: Though Thucydides had a tendency to over detail everything I still found his account of the wars rather intriguing. One day I’ll have to get another copy with the original Greek so I can compare translations.
7. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Star rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 496 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 16 to Feb. 22
Goodreads thoughts: This was just absolutely incredible in so many ways. This book was one of those rare stories where I knew I was going to love it before I even picked it up, but it truly blew me away by how deeply it resonated inside. I hardly knew anything about Korea and Japan in the twentieth century from school. I knew the American side of WWII, and that was pretty much it. I certainly didn’t know the hardships and discrimination that Koreans faced in Japan. Just goes to show that history is never as clear cut as you are taught it to be.
This generational story following a Korean family living in Japan throughout the 1900s is just truly remarkable. Lee managed to take a hundred years of history and weave a story so intricate and interconnected that it felt as if I was watching the years tick by on a screen. I think the most captivating part of this novel is the fact that all of the characters seemed so incredibly human. They screwed up. They made mistakes. They lied and were cheated and survived in the most brutal of ways. And yet not once did I feel a disconnect from them. The attachment I felt to this family is frankly astonishing. Normally I have little patience for morally gray characters, as odd as that sounds. I tend to get annoyed when characters make decisions that are so glaringly stupid. But instead of annoyance and anger during those moments in the story, I felt an overwhelming sense of sympathy (which I know was the intention). This family worked its way into my heart and then lodged itself there. They pay rent and everything. They aren’t leaving any time soon.
8. Vampires in the Lemon Grove: and Other Stories by Karen Russell
Star rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 258 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 21
Goodreads thoughts: The stories were below average, I think. The writing was interesting, in a “this is so weird and I understand nothing” kind of way. A few of the stories did give me a sense of unease that I would expect from a horror collection, but most of them were just odd. The last one was the creepiest to me—scarecrows freak me out so I suppose that makes sense. But mostly I was just bored reading this collection.
9. The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone by Sophocles
Star rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Page count: 259 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 23 to Feb. 25
Goodreads thoughts: n/a - another set of plays that were for my Greek literature class. Oedipus just has some issues man. But Sophocles' commentary on women and democracy are actually quite fascinating, especially in a modern light.
10. The Spy by Paulo Coelho
Star rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Page count: 208 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 27
Goodreads thoughts: Yet another masterpiece by Coelho, though not my favorite. Mata Hari’s life was full of suffering and hardship, and I’m glad that her story has been told so many times, instead of fading out of history like so many others. Also, as always, Coelho’s writing managed to completely overtake my senses. I haven’t found a single other author that writes like he does.
11. Medea by Euripides
Star rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 59 pages (lmao so smol)
Day(s) read: Feb. 24
Goodreads thoughts: n/a - one of my favorite plays from Ancient Greece, because of Euripides' take on women, which was very controversial back when it was written. Medea may be psychotic but she's a woman of action!
12. Avatar: The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Lee and Michael Dante DiMartino (The Kyoshi Novels #1)
Star rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Page count: 442 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 24 to Feb. 25
Goodreads thoughts: I??? Loved this????????
It was so nice returning to one of my favorite worlds. I’ve been a fan of Avatar since the beginning, never missing an episode premiere since the pilot fifteen years ago (FIFTEEN YEARS AGO GUYS. IM OLD). Kyoshi was always my favorite incarnation of the Avatar, with her brashness and her take no shit attitude. Any episode that featured her always ended up being one of my favorites. So getting a whole book series about her?? Amazing.
I appreciated the accuracy to the world most of all. I know that this was co-written with one of the producers of the show so I wasn’t expecting anything less, but the attention to detail just really made my heart sing. Things like the importance of hair in the Fire Nation, and the slow decline of the Southern Water Tribe. And all the mentions of Kyoshi’s height! That was so great.
I can’t wait to read the second installment. Since we only know like two instances of Kyoshi’s life and they both happen later on down the road, I’m excited to see what adventures will happen next.
13. The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty (The Daevabad Trilogy #1)
Star rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 569 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 25 to Feb. 27
Goodreads thoughts: Oh my freaking goodness was this incredible. I’ve always been fascinated by Arabic folklore and mythology and this book did NOT disappoint holy cow.
The overall setup for the plot reminded me a lot of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson: a girl discovers she belongs to an entirely different class of people (or race, in this case) with magical powers and is recruited to help rebel against the current ruler of her people, someone who treats them rather poorly. The twists and turns this story keep pulling out led me to binge reading most of it. Each of the characters actually all had true personality and motivations, and I felt myself really torn between who I was rooting for, who I thought was in the right. Well, until the end that is. That’s when it became rather easy for me to make my choice.
I can’t wait to read the sequel.
14. Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #5)
Star rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Page count: 208 pages
Day(s) read: Feb. 27
Goodreads thoughts: Incredible, amazing, outmatched, unlike anything I’ve seen before, etc etc.
This is one of my favorite series of all time and this installment absolutely did not disappoint. I would say it’s either my second or third favorite of the series—In an Absent Dream is by far number one, and then this is tied with Every Heart a Doorway (and then Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Beneath the Sugar Sky in last place, but still a favorite of mine).
The Moors is just so fascinating, and I’ll be honest I freaking love Jill as a character. She’s completely psychotic and it’s great.
Manga
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba vol. 11-19 by Koyoharu Gotouge
No star rating
Total page count: 1,756 pages
I am now fully caught up with the manga series, as it is ongoing
The Promised Neverland vol. 14-17 by Kaiu Shirai
No star rating
Total page count: 792 pages
I am now fully caught up with the manga series, as it is ongoing
Hikaru no Go vol. 1-23 by Yumi Hotta
No star rating
Total page count: 4,416 pages (yeah, I'm not kidding)
Goodreads thoughts: Well, that ending certainly crushed me to little pieces. But the very last panel gave me a ridiculous amount of hope. I think that Hikaru truly did Sai justice in the tournament. Who would've thought I'd get so invested in a shonen series all about Go. Hotta-sensei really just pulled the right heartstrings with me, I guess. (Also, the anime is hilariously-90s art style, and it makes me wheeze every time I watch an episode.)
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Total page count: 12,234 pages (are you kidding???? Well, that's it. I've peaked. Might as well give up now)
Favorite book of February: Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean
Least favorite book of February: Vampires in the Lemon Grove: and Other Stories by Karen Russell
DNF'd books this month: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Walker
Unfinished books this month: Gates of Fire by Stephen Pressfield
Medea by Kerry Greenwood
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What a wild ride, am I right? Over twelve thousand pages read!! God bless manga, honestly. And even taking all of the manga away, I still read a ridiculous amount of books this month, and nearly all of them were amazing! I'm shook, really.
If the rest of the year pans out like this month, it'll be one hell of a year!
Until next time!
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