Hook ‘Em With First Lines

I picked up (semi-) random assortment of novels from my TO BE READ pile today in a little exercise of curiosity.

A truism for writing fiction nowadays is that the writer must grab the reader’s attention from the beginning.  If the reader (or acquisitions editor) isn’t hooked by the end of the first page, she’s likely to put the book down.

So what I’ve compiled a few first lines that handful of my novels to be read.  These range from new authors to old hands and heavy-hitters. So tell me which of these you find the most compelling and why. A list of their books and authors is below.  Can you match them up?

Answers will come in a later post. Feel free to leave your comments!

1. “No! I don’t want the mangosteen.” Anderson Lake leans forward, pointing.
2. The first thing I can remember in this life is my father driving his white ox, Endurance, to the sky burial platforms.
3. Veldt to scrub fields to farms to these first tumbling houses that rise from the earth.
4. Call me Dodd.
5. I’d been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked in the bar.
6. The great revelations of my adult life began with the shouts of a lost soul in my neighborhood breakfast joint.
7. Manfred’s on the road again, making strangers rich.
8. Dammit, he was nearly out of gas.
9. “Here they come!”

Novels and Authors

It Came from Del Rio – Steven Graham Jones
Perdido Street Station – China Mieville
Green – Jay Lake
Night of Demons – Tony Richards
A Dark Matter – Peter Straub
Dead in Dixie – Charlaine Harris
Fires of Freedom – Jerry Pournelle
The Windup Girl – Paolo Bacigalupi
Accelerando – Charles Stross