Don't judge a book by its cover, but what about its opener?

There is an old saying, “do not judge a book by its cover.” What happens if you try to judge a book by the way the first chapter opens?

I will take a tour of some of the books around me to find out more about what an opening line says about a book. Openers can make a reader want to read more of a book or become less inclined to continue through to the end.

The hypothesis here is simple: Do not judge a book by the cover, but maybe there are some openers to books which could lead to finding treasure in books.

“I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.” David Foster Wallace. Infinite Jest. (1996).

“The vices to be discussed in this essay are those which in Christian theology were most commonly selected as bringing death to the soul, namely sloth, envy, avarice, pride, anger, lust, and gluttony.” Gabriele Taylor. Deadly Vices. (2006).

“What does it mean to ask, “What is time?”” Adrian Bardon. A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time. (2013).

“You are in the post office about to send a gift, a package full of champagne glasses, to a cousin in Central Siberia.” Nassim N. Taleb. Antifragile. (2012).

“Elizabeth Hemings began life when America was still a colonial possession.” Annette Gordon-Reed. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. (2008).

“Aristotle came from the very edge of the Greek world.” John Herman Randall, Jr. Aristotle. (1960).

“It was a provincial version of the grand entrance.” Joseph Ellis. American Sphinx. (1998).

“The storm blasted off Lake Michigan and bucked into Navy Pier, hoisting an icy spray over the bow of the USS Wolverine, then cut a swath through the Loop and angled southwest along the Chicago River, kicking up wrappers and scattering old newspapers as the sound of forty thousand voices echoed across the South Side.” Jim Dent. Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever. (2003).

“Plato (about 428-347 BCE), unmarried aristocrat and sometime cavalry officer, belonged in his youth to the circle of Socrates, a group of young Athenian men who admired and loved the philosopher (in spite of his snub nose, bald head and bulging eyes) and learnt from him how philosophy should be done.” Julian Young. The Death of God and the Meaning of Life. (2014).

“I can see by my watch without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight thirty in the morning.” Robert M. Pirsig. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. (1974).

“Richard Joshua Reynolds lived the proverbial American success story on a big southern stage.” Michelle Gillespie. Katharine and R.J. Reynolds: Partners of Fortune in the Making of the New South. (2012).

“There are philosophers who can write and philosophers who cannot.” Walter Kaufmann. The Portable Nietzsche. (1954).

“America will remain the world’s only superpower for the foreseeable future.” Ian Bremmer. Superpower: Three choices for America’s role in the world. (2016).

“As indicated in the preface, the nucleus of Yoga is its practice, and the yogin is primarily practitioner, not philosopher, theologist or psychologist in the common sense.” George Fuerstein and Jeanine Miller. Yoga and Beyond: Essays in Indian Philosophy. (1972).

“I did it.” Dave Eggers. Your Fathers, Where are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? (2015).

“The cat the child was secretly feeding – the parents would have forbidden it – was growing fatter.” Eric G. Wilson. Polaris Ghost. (2017).

“Croesus, King of Lydia, was considered the richest man of his time.” Nassim N. Taleb. Fooled by Randomness. The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. (2005).

“Contemporary events differ from history in that we do not know the results they will produce.” F.A. Hayek. The Road to Serfdom. (1956).

“Everything within takes place after Jack died and before my mom and I drowned in a burning ferry in the cool tannin-tinted Guaviare River, in east-central Colombia, with forty-two locals we hadn’t yet met.” Dave Eggers. You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2003).

“Logic has sometimes been defined as the science of the laws of thought.” Irving Copi. Introduction to Logic. (2011).

“Why read this introduction?” Keith Culver. Readings in the Philosophy of Law. (2008).

“Heidegger’s philosophy has a great deal to say about the first and last things that confront each of us as we attempt to live our lives as best as we may.” Julian Young. Heidegger’s Later Philosophy. (2002).

“Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara.” Jack Kerouac. Dharma Bums. (1958).

“Nietzsche became a myth even before he died in 1900, and today his ideas are overgrown and obscured by rank fiction.” Walter Kaufmann. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. (1974).

““Was ist das–die Philosophie?” asked Heidegger at a colloquium held in France in August 1955.” George Steiner. Martin Heidegger. (1978).

“We have arrived in the twenty-first century, a time of considerable material progress largely based on technological advances spurred on by a flurry of scientific discoveries.” Dalai Lama. Becoming Enlightened. (2009).

“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost of Discipleship. (1937).