Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

[ QUOTE ]
"I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I
believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my
disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor
for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors.
Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine,
anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am
superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you
probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I
can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my
spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not
consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only
injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is
from spite. My liver is bad, well--let it get worse!"

[/ QUOTE ]

I feel like I should know this, but I don't...

Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

Notes from the underground?

Re: Ayn Rand
 

[ QUOTE ]
"Who is John Galt?" in Atlas Shrugged

"Howard Roark laughed." in The Fountainhead

so simple, but set up the books so well

[/ QUOTE ]

How about:

"We wrote a crappy book." in Anthem.

Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

The opening line of the Neuromance is a question in the original trivial pursuit genus edition.

Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Tolstoy

The first one I thought of, but I don't really agree with it.

Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

[ QUOTE ]
At the beginning of July, during an extremely hot spell, towards evening, a young man left the closet he rented from tenants in S_____y Lane, walked out to the street, and slowly, as if indecisively, headed for the K_____n Bridge.

[/ QUOTE ]