The Friday Book Hooks #1
#bookhooks
#scifimonth 2025
#firstlineFriday
#bookbeginnings
#Friday56

📚  📚 📚

I used to particpate in First Line Friday, Book Beginnings, and Friday 56.
Adele @ Adele Bound in Books gave me the inspiration, by combining all three in one post. She calls them Fragments. Mine will be Book Hooks.

📚

As it is #scifimonth, I’m choosing my latest #scifi review for my Book Hooks #1:

📚 The Hopkins Manuscript,
by R. C. Sherriff
1939
Science-fiction
385 pages

FIRST LINE FRIDAY:

When the Royal Society of Abyssinia discovered ‘The Hopkins Manuscript’ two years ago in the ruins of Notting Hill it was hoped that some valuable light would at last be thrown upon the final, tragic days of London. (from the Foreword)

BOOK BEGINNINGS:

I am writing by the light of a piece of string which I have pushed through a fragment of bacon fat and arranged in an egg-cup. I shall write by night, partly because I can no longer sleep through these ghastly, moonless chasms, and partly because by day I must search for food, and the days are short. (Chapter 1)

FRIDAY 56:

I went to my bookcase. My hands moved instinctively away from the classics – the heavy books of history and philosophy that had helped me through unhappy times in days gone by. Instinctively I went to an obscure, untidy row of books in the corner of the lowest shelf: the oldest friends in my library – the treasures of my boyhood.

I took The Wind in the Willows. I drew my chair to the dying fire and roamed once again in the fragrant meadows with Badger and Mole and the immortal Mr Toad. The first streaks of dawn were coming as at last I arose to go to bed, and as I looked over the silvering valley I no longer saw a stricken world upon the brink of eternity. I thought instead of those myriads of little animals stirring from their winter sleep: wide-eyed and cock-eared for the Pipes of Pan.

MY VERDICT:
More than a science fiction novel about a lunar catastrophe, The Hopkins Manuscript is a profound exploration of what makes us human—for better and for worse.
Click on the cover to read my full review, and access our buddyread notes

Have YOU read
or are YOU planning to read it?
Please leave the link to your own post,
if you did a similar one.