Ten First Lines in the books on the 'Book of the Day' Gadget I Added to my i-Google Site Today.

1. 'The present century has been marked by a prodigious increase in wealth-producing power.'
(Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions, and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth. The Remedy; Henry George.) I am serious—sounds fascinating doesn't it.
2. 'In those strange old times, when fantastic dreams and madman's reveries were realized among the actual circumstances of life, two persons met together at an appointed hour and place.'
(The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne Volume 12; Nathaniel Hawthorn. Extract from 'The Hollow of the Three Hills'. Please note: due to there being no limited preview of this book available, it cannot be guaranteed that the extract is actually from this book. Sorry to the purists.) This sounds intriguing. That's a good first line. I want to read on.
3. 'Whilst every one at court was busily engaged upon his own affairs, a man mysteriously entered a house situated behind the Place de Greve.'
(The Man in the Iron Mask; Alexandre Dumas.) This doesn't sound too bad either, a bit of french, a bit of mystery. Detractors: why are there no women at court? why do I see Leonardo Di Caprio's face whenever I think of this book? I never saw that movie adaptation.
4. 'When the Narasimha Rao government, shortly after taking office in mid-1991, announced its intention to overhaul the workings of the Indian economy, many observers considered the plans of Finance Minister Manmohan Singh far too radical for what 'the compulsions of democratic  politics' would allow.'
(Democratic  Politics and Economic Reform in India; Rob Jenkins. Technically this is the first line of chapter 2; pages  one an two are missing on the limited Google preview. That was just the introduction. Although, bet it was a snappier line.) Might wait on ordering this one off the net, maybe I can borrow it from the library.
5. 'In our current technical society we often measure a continuously varying quantity.'
(Digital Filters; Richard Wesley Hamming.) Too many books are actually published. Like getting pregnant—they say it is incredibly difficult, but so many people seem to accomplish it regardless.
6. 'It has been estimated that the human body is made up of over [10 to the power of 14] cells of which only around 10% are mammalian.'
(Oral Microbiology; Philip Marsh and Michael V Martin) Oh, that is a car accident. I had to look. Turns out the rest are our leeching microflora. Euuogh! It got me reading, it made me want to stop.
7. 'No one would try to teach electrodynamics without using vector calculus.'
(Applied Differential Geometry; William L Burke.) I think I will stick with life. after. theory  and The Moral Vision of Oscar Wilde for the moment thanks.
8. 'Amadeo Terra is staring out the window to the sea on which the sun is dancing.'
(The Cigar Roller; Pablo Medina.) It's not overly catchy for a first line. I dont expect to see it in an overpriced book journal like the one I saw today in Border's—the kind you list the books you have read in. The character's name is a little of a draw though as someone called Terra would seem perhaps like he is going to be an everyman, and therefore I would think that maybe this will be a book about me.
9. 'It is inherently human to show pity to those who are afflicted; it is a quality that becomes any person, but most particularly is it required of those who have stood in need of consolation and have obtained it from others; now if ever there was a man who craved pity or valued it or rejoiced in it, that man was I.'
(The Decameron; Giovanni Boccaccio, Guido Waldman, Jonathan Usher.) I have wanted to read The Decameron for a while so the wordy first sentence won't put me off. I will persevere.
10. 'Dictionary-style definitions of anti-Semitism ("hostility to Jews") are usually not much help, in part because their brevity and abstractness are inadequate to this particular protean phenomenon.'
(Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews; Albert S Lindemann.) This text would, I imagine, be quite interesting. The first sentence, from a writer's point of view, and a critic's scathingness, is not fabulous though. Starting with dictionary definitions. I can't. Sorry.