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I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review Podcast. Summer is on the way, at least in the world of books, and joining me this week is my fellow editor and regular podcast guest, Shumana Khatib, to talk about some books coming out in June, July, and August that we're excited about.
interested in. Yes. That we're intrigued by. That we're curious about. Yes. That we're looking forward to. That have tapped into our innate sense of childlike wonder about the world. Jumana, I'm glad you're here to do this with me. Me too.
So one thing to start, this is not comprehensive. This does not indicate whether or not we're actually going to write about these books at the book review. I haven't even read any of these, to be honest, but we're just talking about based on topic, based on author, based on buzz, what we two people, Gilbert and Giovanna, are most excited about. Is
Is this the time, Gilbert, that we should make the disclaimer to our readers that we are the two people in the book review who hate Summer the most? I couldn't remember if we've talked about that before on the podcast, but I am always happy to talk about my distaste, disdain, dislike.
We didn't even plan that, guys. I promise. For the season as a whole. We both hate summer. And I'm sure there's some deep-seated reason from childhood. You know what's great about summer? Books. Sitting inside in air conditioning, reading a book.
which I remember doing when I was a preteen with my family. And then we went on vacation to some place that had a pool in Northern Virginia and the rest of my family, they were so excited to go out into the pool. It was so hot outside. I stayed inside in the dark, in the cold, reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt called The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris.
And that leads us into the first book that I'm excited to talk about. This is one that is very much for me. Beautiful transition, Gilbert. It's called The Beast in the Clouds, The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda by Natalia Holt. So I once went through a years-long Teddy Roosevelt phase. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. Did you ever go through a president phase? No, but no, I didn't. I've always been skeptical of elected officials. OK, but it's healthy in a democracy. Thank you. I know I've always had my civic duty front of mind. But can I just ask you something? Because I am under the perhaps erroneous belief that giant pandas are real things. Giant pandas are real things. But at the time this was in the late 1920s, they were still sort of a myth.
We had never seen a panda? They were in the West, I think. I think in the parts of the world where there were pandas, it was not a myth. But for many people, it's not like now where you go to the National Zoo and we have all this panda diplomacy going on. There used to be a time when people had never seen pandas.
A Giant Panda Up Close. And so the reason we're talking about Teddy Roosevelt, fascinating guy, 26th president, is that his children were also interesting. So this is a book about Teddy Roosevelt Jr. and his brother Kermit.
which is a non-Muppet name that people used to have. They went off on a search to bring back a panda. Again, late 1920s, many Westerners were like, is this real? They're alive? Let's say alive. I think they want to. Let's just say alive. Yes. I don't want to think about dead pandas. The Roosevelts were hunters. Teddy Roosevelt,
They had a lot of good parts, a lot of bad parts. He hunted a lot of things. I think you can find many of those things at the Museum of Natural History. But they wanted to bring one back to the West, to America. And so this is about that quixotic journey to go and see if they could bring one back. And I have to say, I think I'm glad they did, because there are a few things that have brought people, my family at least, such joy as seeing pandas at a zoo. So I
I'm sure there are negative aspects to this whole thing that I'm missing, but I don't know. What do you think about pandas? Oh, pro. Extremely pro. I'm very much in favor of this whole class of animal called charismatic megafauna. So pandas, elephants, some type of whales, definitely lions. Totally clear that bar. Can you... I've never heard this term before. Can you...
Tell me what it means. My understanding, this needs the world's biggest asterisk, by the way. My understanding of charismatic megafauna is that it refers to the type of species that has captivated. They play an outsized role in human imagination. So people are very attached to pandas, for example, are very attached to cute pandas.
The thing about megafauna, meaning that it has to clear a bar of being a certain size. So whales, lions, elephants. I think pandas are pretty big. Well, the giant panda is. The giant panda is famously giant. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'd never heard this term before. It was great. Yeah. I would like to believe that caring about animals is quite an empathy building exercise. Yeah.
I recently went on vacation for my kid's spring break, and I read this incredible book that had come out last year. Did I tell you about this? Catherine Rundell. She wrote the big children's book, Impossible Creatures. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She also, she's an amazing writer across different topics and different genres. She wrote a book called Vanishing Treasures, a bestiary of extraordinary endangered creatures.
And it's just all these chapters about the elephant and here's the golden mole and here's the hermit crab. And you just come away with all these amazing facts. And guess who had to hear all those facts? Your loving family. My family. And your friends. And maybe the people that sit around me at the office. Did I tell you about the elephant? I don't think so. You know, elephants are afraid of bees. Because they can fly up their trunk. Yes. And they can't do anything about it if the inside of their trunk is stung.
So that is The Beast in the Clouds, the Roosevelt Brothers' deadly quest to find the mythical giant panda. And if this is the type of thing that you're interested in, Roosevelt's quests, there's an amazing book from, I don't know, 2004 or 2005 called The River of Doubt by Candace Millard. It was about Kermit, Teddy Roosevelt's son. He joined his father to try to map uncharted parts of the Amazon River.
This is a great story. It's a great book. I recommend it to anyone who's interested in adventure tales. Great writer. I love Candice Millard. I also, it just makes me realize, man, the way some people bond with their family. They try to chart literal uncharted territory. My mom and I watch All My Children. I think it was different back when you didn't have all these diversions. If they'd had Hulu a hundred years ago.
If they, yeah, they didn't have Andor to watch together. They're like, let's go down the Amazon. Yeah. Okay. So on the subject of exploration and remarkable human achievement, I would like to mention Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. So Atmosphere,
The name Taylor Jenkins Reid may be ringing a bell for you. She has been on this bestseller streak for the last several years. She's made a bit of a name for herself writing about these extraordinary women. So the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo was a bit of a TikTok sensation in the recent past, and that told the story.
Very glamorous story of a Hollywood actress, Liz Taylor vibes. It's a love story and it's beautifully told. She wrote Daisy Jones and the Six, which was a big deal. Big deal. Big deal. Big book, big show. Big show. I actually have had a lot of people tell me they still listen to the soundtrack from that show. And Keri Soto is back about a tennis champ.
So she's really eked out this exceptional women category. And so she's back with the story of a female astronaut, one of the first female
female astronauts accepted into NASA's Astro Corps. It really is an edge of your seat kind of book because we meet the main character named Joan. And when we meet her, she's in the command central while there's a mission going on. So she's the steady voice as her members of her cohort, her colleagues. And this is so much more than a typical colleague. They're the only ones that really know the intense pressure of what it means to become an astronaut. So she is
She's the voice of reason, the voice of calm as they're attempting what should be a routine mission. There's always a little bit of risk or quite a lot of risk when you go into space.
And something starts to go wrong. That's not a spoiler because it starts to go off the rails pretty early on. And Taylor Jenkins Reid structures it so that the book jumps back and forth between the present crisis and Joan's backstory. And this is also a love story. She falls in love with one of her colleagues. She's a very involved aunt to her niece. It's a complicated sibling story. It's very immersive. It reads fast. I think I read it in one day.
And I think if you are at all in that edge of your seat with a romance cinematic kind of novel, I think this is a great thing for you to pick up. That sounds great. I actually think I might want to read that. Yeah. So when is that book out? That is coming out June 3rd. So Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid out in June. The nonfiction book I mentioned before, The Beast in the Clouds.
is out in July. The next book that I want to talk about comes out in June as well. This is The Gunfighters, How Texas Made the West Wild by Brian Burrow. Brian Burrow, I think, is a name that is very familiar to readers of narrative nonfiction. He became famous straight away in the late 80s when he wrote the book Barbarians at the Gate or co-wrote that book.
which was a big nonfiction book about business at the time. In the mid-2000s, he wrote Public Enemies, which was eventually made into a Michael Mann movie, but that was about the rise of the FBI as a national crime-fighting organization, how it intersected with all these famous mid-century criminals, John Dillinger, Babyface Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd,
amazing names back then. I don't know why. What happened? Why our criminals don't have names like this anymore. Get on it, guys. And he was his people probably know him best because he was a longtime writer for Vanity Fair for more than two decades, I believe. And I was reminded I don't know if you read this piece that he wrote. I was reminded of of him recently because he reviewed Graydon Carter's memoir, Graydon Carter, the former longtime editor of Vanity Fair memoir.
let a lot of us in the journalism business reflect upon how we maybe missed the great rich moment in magazine journalism, where if you were Brian Burrow, as he wrote in the piece for the Yale Review, you could write three articles a year and make $498,000. That was like 20 years ago. That was, yeah, it was something like that. So it's an obscene amount of money. I'm happy for him, slightly jealous, and I'm definitely happy that he has a new book out because he writes great books. And this one,
He's been in Texas for a while, so this one is firmly Texas located. This is about the myth of the Wild West gunfighter.
Apparently, there's a period of time I did not know this, even though I've seen so many Westerns referred to as the gunfighter era, 1865 to 1901. So right after the Civil War to right when the 20th century began. And this is focused on literal gunfighters, on all these stories about people who had shootouts and town squares and stuff like that. And I think it's a lot of debunking. So.
OK, but I'm sure there's going to be some lurid truth that comes out, too. Can't all be stranger than fiction. The best truth is lurid. Yeah, that's why we got into this business. Yeah. Before we move on to your book, just curious, are you a Western person? I want to be. And I think I found the movie that's going to make me a Western girl because I'm.
It's a Western gal. I'm trying not to overwhelm myself, trying to do baby steps here, but thank you. So, Gilbert, you're going to know the name of this movie. It's got Warren Beatty, Julie Christie. McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Yes. I cannot wait to watch this. I've heard that there's a lot of fur in it.
It's very wintry. Warren Beatty. I think the cover of the Criterion Blu-ray has Warren Beatty wearing one of the most amazing fur coats that has ever existed in the history of humanity. Like Edward Gorey level fur? Yes, yes, it is. And he has a bowler hat. It's a grimy movie because it takes place in the West and in winter. And Robert Altman, not interested in printing it up. It's just there's a lot of mud.
There's a lot of grit, a lot of grime, but it's pretty wonderful. And I have three copies if you want to borrow one. Good. Duly noted. I'm so excited. I've heard only good things. Okay. So this is called Next to Heaven by James Fry. Yes, it's that James Fry, the one of A Million Little Pieces, fame, infamy, whatever. Yeah.
I will say with the distance of time, I think that whole scandal is it's crazy to think that could happen today. Remind us why James Fry got into trouble. So he wrote this very lurid account of addiction and it was billed as a nonfiction account. And it turns out that a lot was exaggerated to dial up the drama of it.
And this had been an Oprah, this had been a book that Oprah had celebrated. And then when the scandal came out, she brought him back to the show and really held his feet to the fire.
Just the idea that we had a literary scandal that totally paralyzed the United States for at least a week. Unbelievable to me. So he has been writing since then. He's written a bunch of stuff. Yeah, yeah. He had an adult novel back in 2018. I think he's been writing a lot of screenplays. And with this new book, Next to Heaven, you do have that screenplay feel. This is something I'm seeing in a lot of contemporary books where it feels like the writers are...
doubly writing for the screen and the page, but that's for another time. So this is the story of a very wealthy Connecticut town, fictional, called New Bethlehem.
And it follows appropriately wealthy, appropriately fabulous, appropriately attractive couples in this community. And it centers on two best friends who are both bored in their marriage, outright dissatisfied. And they cook up the plan, the two wives, they cook up the plan to stage a swingers party. Is that the right word? Do you stage a swingers party?
A swingers party? Well, you do stage it because they manipulated it down to the thing. And this is still not a spoiler, by the way. The two hostesses had their mark. They had the men they wanted to sleep with. And so there was going to be nothing left to chance. It reminds me of the idea of a key party. I mean, it basically is a glorified key party. And so that's something. And...
That's the beginning of the book? Well, that's the premise of the book. Okay. And then it actually does devolve from there. There's murder. There's intrigue. There's deceit. There's all sorts of stuff. I guess I should say lurid, propulsive. Somebody called good trashy fun. I don't like that descriptor, but it appeals to one's baser instincts, I could say. That's Next to Heaven. Next to Heaven. When's that out? That is out in June 3rd. We'll be right back.
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Welcome back. This is the Book Review Podcast, and I'm Gilbert Cruz. I'm here with my fellow editor, Jumanica Teab, and we are talking about a few books we are looking forward to this summer. I want to speak about a book that I know maybe you have dipped into that is about a marriage that is put under some pressure. So this book is called A Marriage at Sea, A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhurst.
And this is about a couple. This takes place in 1973. Maurice and Marilyn, they want to get out onto the high seas. I love a high seas tale. They're going to sail around the world. They're going to go from Britain. They're going to go and just see what happens. They get to New Zealand and a whale knocks into their boat. The boat sinks. They're left on a raft for four months to survive.
So they not only have to survive, but they're a married couple. And their marriage has to survive. What's going to happen here? Nothing good. What a story. This is a great story. I can't wait to read it. Not only because it's set on the ocean. I love the ocean. I love whales. But I also love marriages under duress.
There's a very, very good quote that and I love this tongue in cheekness of this. So the author actually makes a point of saying, what else is a marriage if not being stuck on a small raft with someone and trying to survive? So wise.
So that is A Marriage at Sea. When is that out? Do you happen to know? That is out in July. Okay. Yeah. So you can gird your loins. You can line up the couples therapist before you dip into that. Yes, please do that. What do you have next, Jumana? So...
This is also about a family in duress. This is a novel. This is a very interesting novel. It's got a lot going on. This is called The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Hamiri. He is also a playwright. He's one of Sweden's most decorated writers, in case you're wondering. I'm glad there are people to tell us who...
A nation's most decorated writer. It's me, c'est moi. Okay. This is a really interesting book because it's, in my professional opinion, this is basically two books stitched together and it actually works. So the frame of the book is this fictional story of the Mikola sisters who are Swedish-Tunisian. They're a bit outcast. Their father has died and they're left being raised by their nutty Tunisian mom who sells carpets and believes the family is cursed.
Obviously, I like this because I feel that I know this woman perhaps might be related to her myself. So the sisters are there are three of them and they could not be more different temperamentally. And their story is told from.
The perspective of somebody who grew up near them. And the narrator himself is Swedish-Tunisian and is intrigued by them because obviously he feels some commonality with them because of their shared background. Even just being a little bit different in a place that really...
prioritizes conformity. So that's the fictional track. And then the chapters are interspersed with what read like more of an autobiography from the author's perspective. It talks about his own upbringing, talks about his
entry into writing. It talks about his struggles to write. He writes very movingly about mental illness. I really loved this book. I came to love the characters. Of course, if somebody had cooked up a book in a lab, for me specifically, it would probably resemble this. You got alienation. You got racially confused people in a place. You got questions of belonging. I can't wait for someone to send you a t-shirt with those three phrases on it.
Instead of the Beatles t-shirt where it's John and Paul. Yeah. So, yeah, this was a nice novel to sink into. I should mention it's quite long. It's 700 pages long.
You should have said that at the top. No, I shouldn't have. I said that in due time. Anyway, it's it reads very quickly, though. Oh, that sounds wonderful. Say the title again. And when's it out? This is called The Sisters. And this is coming out in mid-June. I'm going to talk about a couple of thrillers. They're both out in June. The first is it's called The First Gentleman. And this is by well-known author James Patterson.
and former president of these United States, Bill Clinton. So this is the third book that the two of them have written together. It's amazing to go back and look at post-presidential careers. What do people do after they have held the highest land in this office? Some of them write thrillers with James Patterson. And that's what Bill Clinton has done. So what is this one about? The president's husband is on trial for murder. Very poorly timed because she is up for re-election.
So this is a thriller that intersects with politics. It's very funny because Hillary Clinton has also written her own thriller. If you remember from years ago, she co-wrote State of Terror with Louise Penny, the great thriller writer who has her Inspector Gamache series. I don't know. I just think people love these books. A lot of people are going to read these books. People love James Patterson. We just had news that James Patterson signed a deal with Mr. Beast.
the very, very famous YouTuber. They're co-writing a book together. I can imagine seeing this on many a beach this summer. Oh, totally. Oh, yeah. This is going to be beaches across America. Now, if you prefer your thrillers and detective stories a little less off the news, I have good news. Picador is reissuing all 75 of the Inspector May Gray mysteries. This is by the great Belgian writer Georges Simenon.
And these are fun. These are great if you like Poirot, if you like the idea of a well-groomed European investigating things gone awry. I think these are for you. They read very fast. My mom loves them. We have all 75 already. I can't wait to add all 75. I've always wanted to dip into these. They exist out there. If you go to your thriller section or mystery section of your local bookstore, you'll probably find, I think they're Penguin editions. There are just a ton of them.
And they are pretty thin. But Picador and FSG are going to reissue them. And they're starting with three this summer. So it's just another reason to pick them up and try something new. I really, I think I have one or two. I'd love to start that series. Although 75 bucks is a
That's a years-long project. One by one. That's a years-long project. One by one, bird by bird, Gilbert. Let's take it day by day. The other thriller I wanted to talk about that also comes out in June is called King of Ashes. This is by S.A. Cosby. You might be familiar with S.A. Cosby. He writes crime fiction that's set in the South, primarily, I believe, the northern part of the South, like Virginia. And this is his fifth novel. He has written My Darkest Prayer, Blacktop Wasteland, Razorblade Tears, and All the
All the Sinners Bleed, which is the only one of his I've read. Stephen King positively reviewed it for us back in 2023. And one of the most exciting things for me, or the opposite of Inspector May Gray, is getting in someone's career when they're still in early days. These five books, as opposed to someone like Michael Connelly,
who we profiled here at the Book Review a few months ago, who's written dozens and dozens of books. He's a great writer, but imagining dipping into his oeuvre and trying to make it all the way through is slightly intimidating. He's published dozens of books. S.A. Cosby, you can get in on the ground floor. Okay, I do walk around with an approval matrix in my mind of types of books that we have. So I have something that's in the complete opposite quadrant here.
of what you just discussed. Because I know there are people out there who like the chilly, remote, distant, dread-inflected contemporary novel. So that is what I'm going to talk about today. This is called Bonding by Marielle Franklin. This is a very...
It's a very precise satire of tech industry, pharmaceuticals, modern dating. So this follows a woman in her early 30s named Mary. She's working at some ridiculous startup. I think it's called Healthify or something. And she's laid off. And so she goes to Ibiza because she doesn't know what else to do. And she gets mixed up with this guy.
guy named Tom who's sober but is working on what he thinks is going to be a totally revolutionary antidepressant. And while she's out there, she's hearing from this woman named Lara, who is her sort of ex-
And she knows that Mary needs a job. And so then Mary, you know, she's still seeing this guy who's working on the antidepressant that's going to change the world. And then she's working for her sort of ex who's working on this drug.
dating app that's supposed to accept any kink or any taste or any fetish. And of course, it goes off the rails, right? You could not pay me to work with any of my exes, as wonderful as they are, but certainly not on a dating app. And so I think that this is just a good... If you're looking for perspective on what's going on right now, contemporary life, this might be good for you. I don't normally mention...
advance praise, but this is a book that Zadie Smith really loves. It came out in the UK a little bit ago. So that might be something to add to your reading list. And when's that out again? That is out in July. Got it. Switching genres very briefly, I'm going to talk about a book that comes out in early June. This is Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab.
Hopefully, some listeners saw the five-day poetry challenge that we did at the book review in which we tried to help
readers memorize the poem requerdo by edna saint vincent malay wonderful poem beautiful poem you should try it if you haven't we got a bunch of celebrity readers to read the poem in full to try to help people memorize it one of those people was v schwab we're very happy to have her if you don't know she is she's a beloved fantasy writer she's best known for two series the
One's a trilogy. One's a duology. I don't believe in duologies. I don't like using that word. It's just two books. It's just a book and its sequel. But I think in the fantasy genre, they do use the word duology a lot. Darker Shade of Magic is one of them and Vicious is the other. But I think her crossover hit was a book that I remember seeing all over the place many years ago. The Invisible Life of Eddie LaRue. I think it's still front on many bookstores, bookshelves. And this one is a standalone. It's about...
lesbian vampires in three separate time periods. 1530 Spain, 1820s London, and 2019 Boston. Which of those time periods would you prefer to live in? Definitely not Boston at any point.
So that is Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab. That comes out in early June. Let's stick with fantasy for a minute because I have a good recommendation. OK. This is Catabasis by R.F. Kuang. This is a bit of a homecoming for her because she is known for the Poppy Ward trilogy. She's known for Babel. She writes these sweeping stories.
historical fantasy books that often are centered on academia. Her last book, Yellow Face, was a total swerve for her. This was a racial satire of the publishing industry. So with this new one, Catabasis, she's coming back to familiar terrain.
And it follows two rival magic students. Alice, who's our heroine, has accidentally killed her advisor. And so she and her rival student decide to go to hell to recover their advisor, bring him back. Alice becomes...
because she feels guilty that she killed him and also because she wants a job. And she knows if he recommends her for a job, she'll become a professor. Now, if that's not relatable, I don't know what is. That is the essence of academia right there. I will do anything to get tenure, including going to hell to bring back my beloved advisor. To hell and back. She didn't even like the guy, by the way. She doesn't even like this advisor. I just need that letter of recommendation. So that is Catavasis by R.F. Kwong.
OK, I realize that R.F. Kwong may be not to everybody's taste, but I think almost everybody loves James Baldwin. I can imagine some bad people who don't like James Baldwin. I think most most good people like James Baldwin, who really has over the past many decades had a rediscovery. It's possibly because we're coming out of his of the centennial of his birth, which was in summer 2024.
But James Baldwin is all over the place. If you haven't seen a documentary that came out in 2016 called I'm Not Your Negro, directed by Raoul Peck, it's fantastic. I've seen it twice. This is not that, however. This is a book called Baldwin, A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs. This, as is being sold as the first major biography of the writer in several decades,
And it's focusing on his relationship specifically with four men that he had romantic relationships or collaborative artistic relationships with over the course of his career. It's quite a big book. I've never read a biography of James Baldwin. I've read other books by him. I've seen YouTube videos of him talking his life.
I don't know, one of the great all-time speakers in American recorded time. Charisma incarnate. So I'm actually very excited to check this one out. Baldwin, A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs. And then we should just mention a bunch of titles that are
that are coming out by writers who you may know, who we don't necessarily have time to get into a ton. We have Flashlights by Susan Choi, So Far Gone by Jess Walter. Ed Park has a collection of short stories coming out called An Oral History of Atlantis. The former editor of the New York Times Book Review,
Person Who Did My Job has a book coming out about William F. Buckley called Buckley, The Life and the Revolution That Changed America. Very big biography. Melissa Phoebus has a memoir coming out called The Dry Season, A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex. Also, Aisha Muharrar has a debut novel coming out called Loved One. Gary Steingart has a novel coming called Vera or Faith. And
And Megan Abbott, the great twisty thriller queen, has a book coming called El Dorado Drive, which is thrilling to me because it's all about pyramid schemes and MLMs. Why do you like pyramids? Oh, my God, because I've just been waiting for somebody to blow the whistle on these. So we've waited all this time. No one knows how bad pyramid schemes are. No, people know how bad they are. I just I'm happy that it's crossed over into the realm of fiction.
So, Jumana, let us end this episode, which has been a delight, this way. Not what are you looking forward to reading, but how are you looking forward to reading this summer? Oh, great question, Gilbert. I love reading when it's 88 to 92 degrees on the beach for hours. It's when it's so hot, all you can do is read.
That is what I'm excited about. That sounds great. How about you, Gilbert? Obviously sitting in an uncomfortable chair in an overly air-conditioned space. Naturally. Okay. Well, Jumana, as always, a pure delight to have you on. Thank you for coming on the podcast to talk about what you're looking forward to this summer. Thank you for having me. The best part about summer, the books. The books. The books. The books.
That was my conversation with Jumaana Khatib about a few of the books that we are looking forward to this summer. I am Gilbert Cruz. I'm the editor of the New York Times Book Review. I hope you have a long list of books that you're looking forward to this summer. Thank you, as always, for listening.
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