Don’t you love a great hook? The first line from each of these books is precedes the book cover. Whether that first line is profound, humorous, shocking or just sparks your curiosity, these books will have you at hello.
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“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.” – Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
“Every seven-year-old deserves a superhero. That’s just how it is. Anyone who doesn’t agree needs their head examined. That’s what Elsa’s granny says, at least.” – Frederik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry
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“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.” – Octavia E. Butler, Kindred
“Under a low sun, pursued by fish and mounted by crows and veiled in a loud languid swarm of bluebottle flies, the body comes down the river like a deadfall stripped clean.” – Jon Clinch, Finn
“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” – Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby