What's your favourite opening line of a book?
Mine is

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport."

from Douglas Adams's "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul"
( mistaspakkaman is just a little boy who likes to press buttons., Mon 1 Jun 2009, 20:51, Reply)

Pffrrrummmp. And a very happy New Year to you too, Mr Enderby.
I can't think of another novel that starts with a fart.


Inside Mr Enderby by Anthony Burgess.
( big-girl's-blouse owns far too much fleece, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 20:58, Reply)

Android's Dream by John Scalzi
starts with "[character whose name escapes me] wasn't sure he could fart his way into a diplomatic incident, but he was sure going to find out."

Entire first chapter is an extended high brow fart joke. It. Is. Awesome.
(blinkin the merrily misanthropic IT gremlin, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 21:36, Reply)

Dammit,
I saw your poser and was going to open with mine, then realised you'd used Douglas :-(

"The early morning scream of horror was Arthur Dent waking up.

It wasn't that the cave was damp. It wasn't that the cave was smelly. It was that the cave was in the middle of Islington and there wouldn't be a bus for two million years."

/Edit: And I love your opening, which carries on: "...they'd exposed and highlighted the plumbing, presumably on the grounds that it was functional, and hidden all the exits presumably on the grounds that they weren't."
(MrOli is ugly, but in the morning you will be sober, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 21:01, Reply)

Dr Strauss says I shoud rite down what I think and remembir and evrey thing that happins to me from now on.
I am not a spakka, that really is the first line from "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes.

The whole book is written in the first person by a character who starts off with an IQ of 68 and then gets an operation which turns him into a genius. Brilliant book.
(GarbageFan didn't know what to have as a board sig on, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 21:10, Reply)

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc
ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
ssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pollen by Jeff Noon
(Halfy Shit Tesco petrol broke my car apparently, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 21:15, Reply)

Bless you
/offers tissue
(Potty Jag har smör i min rumpspringa, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 22:19, Reply)

Best sci fi book ever: Neuromancer
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel"
(Errorist, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 21:18, Reply)

I was about to post the Gibson one
but was beaten to it. Have this one instead:

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth
century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by
intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as
men busied themselves about their various concerns they were
scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a
microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and
multiply in a drop of water.
(Sadness Tinged with Arousal Shit, or get off the Internet., Mon 1 Jun 2009, 21:38, Reply)

Wells
War of the Worlds?
(Halfy Shit Tesco petrol broke my car apparently, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 21:43, Reply)

Superb book
I love the descriptions of how long it takes him to get from one bit of London to another
(cheeses swept kissed a dog and he liked it., Mon 1 Jun 2009, 21:51, Reply)

And this might be the best opening line from an album too
Yeah, I now it's ever-so-slightly tweaked for Jeff Wayne's musical version, but it's close enough for me.

Do do doooo, do do doooo, do do doooo, do do dooo
Do do doooo...da na na, da na na

Well, maybe H G Wells didn't include enough "do do dooos" for me.
(GarbageFan didn't know what to have as a board sig on, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 22:05, Reply)

You forget the best bit of the album
The wail of the machines... it still sends shivers down my back every time I hear it.
(Potty Jag har smör i min rumpspringa, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 22:10, Reply)

"the Earth belonged to the martians..."
the martian wail that follows that one always gets me

*shudder*
( Vipros looks like he stands on kids' toys, Tue 2 Jun 2009, 9:05, Reply)

Crow Road by Iain Banks
It was the day my grandmother exploded.
(Halfy Shit Tesco petrol broke my car apparently, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 21:30, Reply)

Often cited
as the canonical example of an excellent first line.
( The Light In Giftwrap won't play poker with the Skull Spark Joker, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 22:24, Reply)

Gaah!
I can't find my copy of "Only Forward" by Michael Marshall Smith.

It oozes quotable shit, so I'm positive the first line will be good.
( The Light In Giftwrap won't play poker with the Skull Spark Joker, Mon 1 Jun 2009, 22:30, Reply)

I have that book!
It's fucking awesome; not read it for years.
( Davros' Granddad is unflappable, unlike his coat., Mon 1 Jun 2009, 23:20, Reply)

and Spares... also excellent
What good taste you all have.
( cunt cat retarded science: indistinguishable from religion, Tue 2 Jun 2009, 8:32, Reply)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.
- from "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.
(oball, Tue 2 Jun 2009, 6:22, Reply)