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BittersweetBooks

BittersweetBooks

Joined May 2016

only time is ours, the rest we'll just wait & see
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Tilt by Emma Pattee
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BittersweetBooks
One Golden Summer | Carley Fortune
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Nothing lasts forever, Ali…That‘s why you should grab onto whatever makes you happy now and hold on for as long as you can 🚤

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BittersweetBooks
Atmosphere: A Love Story | Taylor Jenkins Reid
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She can see the past, but it is now tinged with the excruciating inevitability of the present moment 💔

Because it feels good to love someone…It feels better than anything on this Earth. And I bet better than anything up there 🚀💫🔭

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BittersweetBooks
Long Bright River | Liz Moore
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My implication, of course, was that it is the decisions that I have made in life that have placed me on my specific path — decisions, not chance 💉🚔🖤

Amiable Loved this book! 2w
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BittersweetBooks
Wild Dark Shore | Charlotte McConaghy
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It is really fucking sad that it should take loss to know the precise quality of love 🐋🦭🌊

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BittersweetBooks
Nesting | Roisn O'Donnell
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Rhona has always said the dawn chorus is a way for birds to tell each other they have survived the night. Ciara has no notion if this is true or not, but she can‘t help liking the idea. The joyous flutter of song is a flag wave. I‘m still here. I made it through 🐦‍🔥

Love you, love you, love you. Nothing quiet about this love. Boisterous, shouty, exuberant love ❤️

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BittersweetBooks
The Measure | Nikki Erlick
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But sometimes I think we forget that it also takes strength to be able to let go 🧵

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BittersweetBooks
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My dad always said a person needs three things to be happy: something to do; someone to love; and something to look forward to 🐈🚗🗺️

JamieArc I really liked this one. It was really great on audio 2mo
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BittersweetBooks
A Family Matter | Claire Lynch
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The oddness of being in love with people who become less and less known to you each year 🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒

You cannot die, because you will be missing from the photographs of all the days that haven‘t happened yet 💔

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BittersweetBooks
The Names: A Novel | Florence Knapp
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And they wonder again at what she gave to them. How she lived for them, and because of them. And in spite of everything 🤍

She is fifty-four, and she feels the whole world is moving on without her. She‘s been given a life, but she has somehow failed to spend it ⏳

Beatlefan129 That looks like an amazing reading spot 🌊 2mo
Lesliereadsalot Not to mention the cool slippers! 2mo
Amiable Great photo! 2mo
BittersweetBooks @Beatlefan129 It was, wish I could have stayed out there all day but it was way too hot 🥵 2mo
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BittersweetBooks
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There can be no greater intoxication, no purer feeling, than the moment when you meet your child after all the months of wondering and hoping and dreaming 🤱

Lives should be measured in intensity.
Remember mine
For its glory-stretch of furious light and wondrous beauty.
The world we love-lived.
🌳❤️‍🩹

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BittersweetBooks
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We are in the twilight years of a long love affair, and it has recently occurred to me that a day will come when one of us buries the other. But, I remind myself, that is the happy ending to a story like ours. It is a vow made and kept. It is the only acceptable outcome to a long and happy marriage, and I am determined not to fear that day, whenever it arrives. I am equally determined to soak up all the days between 📔❄️

TiredLibrarian Loved this one. 3mo
BittersweetBooks @TiredLibrarian me too, it was so good! 3mo
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BittersweetBooks
The Safekeep | Yael van der Wouden
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A pretty deception 🍐

Isabel had never known loneliness like that, one that arrived without the promise of leaving. There was no one now, no one to walk through the door unannounced, no one to open and close a drawer in the other room 🚪🍽️

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BittersweetBooks
How to Sleep at Night | Elizabeth Harris
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Nicole was a lifelong Cincinnati Reds fan and could easily participate in banter about the current season, which charmed older men in a way she found irritating because their delight seemed to be rooted in surprise ⚾️💃🥃

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BittersweetBooks
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You can always be better, she‘d said to me when we first met. But what was the point if you had everything and enjoyed nothing? ⛸️🖤

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BittersweetBooks
James: A Novel | Percival Everett
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…but I knew I could run. I could always run. But running and escaping were not the same thing. I had to ask myself and answer honestly, How much do I want to be free? And I couldn‘t lose sight of my goal of freeing my family. What would freedom be without them? 🛶

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BittersweetBooks
This Is a Love Story | Jessica Soffer
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I remember one day, on the porch, holding your hand, your unsick hand. I asked you where you wanted to go, what you wanted to do. You remember saying you just wanted to stay here for longer.

Take a break. A breath. That feeling when you don‘t want a novel to end but this.

Every word must count.

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BittersweetBooks
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No woman is a star. No woman is a god or a tree or a magician. But for a while, in your arms, the universe was the right size, and I knew where I was 🤱

BarbaraBB Looking forward to this one. 4mo
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BittersweetBooks
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Promise me, no matter how old and boring you get, or where you go, or who you‘re with, you‘ll never stop looking for this 📸

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BittersweetBooks
Talking at Night | Claire Daverley
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It is all less beautiful, on the way down 🎶

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BittersweetBooks
Rental House | Weike Wang
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Because suffering is required. To suffer is to strive and to set a bar so high that one never becomes complacent. To become complacent is to become lazy and to lose one‘s spirit to fight, and to lose one‘s spirit to fight is to die. So, to suffer is to live.

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BittersweetBooks
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Not all the time, or often—just now and then—the light hits the pieces of colored glass just right, and for what may be just a fleeting moment, everything looks beautiful. If a person doesn‘t ask too many questions about what happened yesterday or what‘s going to happen next. If she can just look at this one brief moment in time, without asking for more 🫧

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BittersweetBooks
The Women: A Novel | Kristin Hannah
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Maybe happy now, happy for a moment, is all we really get. Happy forever seems a shitload to ask in a world on fire 🪖🚁🇺🇸

JamieArc Ha! This is how I feel about all of this author‘s books 😂. A moment maybe of happy and the rest is suffering and sadness 😂 5mo
BittersweetBooks @JamieArc haha true! And this MC in particular experienced just about every horrible thing imaginable. 5mo
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BittersweetBooks
Meredith, Alone | Claire Alexander
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At what point does it switch, and we wish we could turn the clock back instead of propel its hands forward?

I missed something I‘d lost a long time ago. Us being little girls. Together all the time.

🐈🏡❤️‍🩹

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BittersweetBooks
Count the Ways: A Novel | Joyce Maynard
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How was anybody supposed to calculate that one? What was her home worth? Everything, if a happy family lived in it. Otherwise, nothing 🌳💔

Lesliereadsalot Labor Day was one of my all time favorite books. How do you feel about this one? 6mo
Amiable Oh, I raced through this book when I read it a few years ago —so good! 6mo
BittersweetBooks @Lesliereadsalot I loved it! Such an honest depiction of a woman trying to keep her family whole amongst life‘s challenges, it had me emotional at several points. And I can‘t wait to read the follow-up to this one! 6mo
BittersweetBooks @Amiable Agreed! I didn‘t want to put this one down. Have you read How the Light Gets In yet? I‘m eager to pick it up now and hope it‘s just as good. 6mo
Amiable @BittersweetBooks No!! I didn‘t know about this one! Thanks for the heads up —going to the library ASAP! 6mo
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BittersweetBooks
What Does It Feel Like? | Sophie Kinsella
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You hate spoilers in books and films. We both do. But when it comes to this, all we want, above anything else, is a spoiler. We desperately want the doctors to give us the spoiler, but they can‘t, because they don‘t know either ❤️‍🩹

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BittersweetBooks
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We all tell you to move forward, but where exactly is forward? There‘s no other place we can go. To face the past is to momentarily turn your back on what is now. And when you do that, you miss so damn much 🕰️

People say it gets easier, but that‘s only because each day we get a little closer to seeing them again 🌈

Lesliereadsalot My favorite book of last year by far! 6mo
BittersweetBooks @Lesliereadsalot My favorite so far this year, so I can see why. It‘s going to stay with me for a long time. 6mo
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BittersweetBooks
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I hope you‘re getting what you want from this life, too 🏕️🛶🌲

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BittersweetBooks
Colored Television | Danzy Senna
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A lie well told, often enough told, began to eat one‘s memory. And over time, it became harder to say where the fiction ended and the truth began. And maybe if you lied long enough, you became a lie 📓🎬🫢

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BittersweetBooks
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But we can‘t always be what we want every second. And that‘s okay. That‘s just life, you know? 💍💔

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BittersweetBooks
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The beginning of a novel is like a first date. You hope from the first lines an urgent magic will take hold, and you will sink into the story like a hot bath, giving yourself over entirely 📖

Because that‘s all art is, in the end. One person trying to get another person they have never met to fall in love with them 📱

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BittersweetBooks
Here One Moment | Liane Moriarty
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My favorite 2024 reads! 📚

For the first time in 6 years, I met my reading goal! My goal was 35, but I totaled 37 books for the year. With two littles (2.5 years and 5 months) and two jobs, I‘m really proud of myself. Although beating my challenge is nice, it‘s never my end goal. My ultimate goal is always to read daily and enjoy good books, simple and sweet ❤️

Here‘s to challenging myself to 40 reads for 2025, happy reading friends! 🤓

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BittersweetBooks
Sandwich: A Novel | Catherine Newman
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Maybe love is grief imploding. Or maybe it‘s love expanding. I don‘t know. I just know you can‘t create loss to preempt loss because it doesn‘t work that way. So you might as well love as much as you can. And as recklessly. Like it‘s your last resort, because it is 👙⛱️🦞

marleed That‘s beautiful 💕 8mo
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BittersweetBooks
Intermezzo | Sally Rooney
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Thinking about that day, the dog running for the tennis ball, the pasta they ate together, the feeling wells up inside of him painfully. Wanting to say and hear the words again, that can never again be said or heard. To return to the house once more, and not find it dark and empty, but airy and bright again with open windows. To spend an afternoon together, playing with the dog, eating dinner, doing nothing, only being together, just once more 🏠

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BittersweetBooks
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Nobody needs to live alone. You‘re just more comfortable that way. A little discomfort might do you good 🛋️

ManyWordsLater Is that a quote from the book? I love it. 10mo
BittersweetBooks @ManyWordsLater yes, it is! Instead of doing book reviews on this app, I highlight my favorite quote(s) from each book. I love going back and reading them over time. 10mo
BarbaraBB I love that idea! 3mo
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BittersweetBooks
The Cliffs: A Novel | J. Courtney Sullivan
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…and everyone wanted to be Allison‘s best friend. But for some reason, she chose Jane, the nerd, the new girl, the one who reads novels at the bus stop before school because she liked reading novels, but also because she hoped it might disguise the fact of how alone she was 📚

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet 🌙

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BittersweetBooks
Here One Moment | Liane Moriarty
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It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on Earth and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had 🦋

LiteraryinPA I‘m reading this right now and loving it! 10mo
BittersweetBooks @LiteraryinPA I loved it so much, like life changing for me! It may be my favorite Liane Moriarty book to-date ☺️ 10mo
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BittersweetBooks
Expiration Dates | Rebecca Serle
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My life has been filled with magical moments, I was just so busy waiting I didn‘t see them when they were here 💫

Protection and love are not the same thing. Love says, I will try and I will fail. Love says, Despite. Love says, And yet and yet and yet ♥️

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BittersweetBooks
Same As It Ever Was | CLAIRE. LOMBARDO
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Parenthood was a persistent cruelty, a constant, simultaneous desire to be together and apart 🤱

…how you‘d do anything for your kids to make sure they never feel alone 💛

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BittersweetBooks
Long Island Compromise: A Novel | Taffy Brodesser-Akner
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It‘s only right then that you ever truly understand how big and unsearchable the world actually is—how it is far too big to find something in it that is really lost 🏭💵🪦

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BittersweetBooks
The Wives: A Memoir | Simone Gorrindo
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The whole purpose of sharing your life with another person might be for witnessing these moments together…All the small moments that are made strange or disquieting or beautiful when you see them with someone else 🇺🇸

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BittersweetBooks
The Husbands | Holly Gramazio
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Toby and Maryam are her perfect match, her proof that two imperfect people can make something work, something straightforward and good…Just two people who are happy with each other 🪜

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BittersweetBooks
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Things always seem the worst just after they happen. Time will take care of this as time always does 🫐🪨

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BittersweetBooks
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Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it ☀️🦪

Lesliereadsalot We read a lot of the same books! 13mo
BittersweetBooks @Lesliereadsalot I noticed the same thing! ☺️ 13mo
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BittersweetBooks
The Seven Year Slip | Ashley Poston
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You never commit a mundane moment to memory, thinking it‘ll be the last time you‘ll hear their voice, or see their smile, or smell their perfume. Your head never remembers the things your heart wants it to in hindsight 💔

Life doesn‘t always go as planned. The trick is to make the most of it when it doesn‘t ✈️

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BittersweetBooks
Bye, Baby: A Novel | Carola Lovering
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That‘s just how friendships become in your thirties, I think as I head south. The love is still there, but the urgency for that constant companionship fades, replaced by something else—romantic partnerships, yes, but maybe we also just get tired 👯‍♀️

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BittersweetBooks
Good Material | Dolly Alderton
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You don‘t let go once. That‘s your first mistake. You say goodbye over a lifetime. You might not have thought about her for ten years, then you‘ll hear a song or you‘ll walk past somewhere you once went together—something will come to the surface that you‘d totally forgotten about. And you say another goodbye. You have to be prepared to let go and let go and let go a thousand times 💔

marleed I have this line tagged in my copy of this book. 14mo
Lesliereadsalot Really liked this one! 13mo
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BittersweetBooks
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I thought of the blissful mundanity of life; of what a privilege it was to live it ✨

Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall 💜

We marvel at a nectarine sunset or the smell of a baby‘s head…even though we know that everyone we love will cease to exist one day. I don‘t know how we do it 🥀

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BittersweetBooks
Worry: A Novel | Alexandra Tanner
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I‘m jealous of the way Poppy still thinks that everything she‘s ever experienced is special 💫

“I get really bad strep every sixteen months like clockwork. What makes you get strep every sixteen months?”

“Being alive,” Poppy says. “Getting strep is part of being alive.” 🤒

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BittersweetBooks
My Husband: A Novel | Maud Ventura
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If we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so 🖤

ChaoticMissAdventures This was my absolute favorite book last year! I still think about it all of the time, I hope you enjoy!! 1y
BittersweetBooks @ChaoticMissAdventures I just finished it and I‘m still digesting. The epilogue really shook me though! I can see how this book would stay with you for a while… 1y
Lesliereadsalot Loved the ending! 13mo
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BittersweetBooks
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…this disquiet I have long reckoned with as my most permanent companion: it comes from a place of wanting. And to want is a hopeful thing. It‘s the most hopeful thing, really📱

Time is everywhere, it is everything. Time is literally all there is ⏰

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