C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
“During the Civil War in the United States an influential club was formed in Baltimore.”
“On February the 1st, 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collision with a derelict when about the latitude 1°S and longitude 107°W.”
The Island of Dr Moreau. Hope you’re thinking Michael York, not Val Kilmer
“…, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls.”
I’m missing out the first word 'cause it would be a little obvious.
From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne
Hmm… my copy goes thusly, but I think we are on the same book, just a different translator.
“During the War of the Rebellion, a new and influential club was
established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland.”
Ranchoth is that The White Mountains by John Christoper?
Here’s mine: “It was a pleasure to burn.”
“You don’t know about me without you have read a book…”
That’s If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi, I think
Tapioca Dextrin’s latest was Gormenghast
The first word is “Gormenghast”, but the book is Titus Groan.
And I try never to think about Val Kilmer, especially in that context.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
Stand corrected there. How about this, fairly easy, one:
It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future
What a well read group we are!
Here you go: “It was Wang Lung’s wedding day.”
Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer.
The Book of the New Sun, vol. 1: The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
In a not-too-unrelated vein . . .
“There is entwined seven-tentacled lightning.”
(Sorry - Fiat Lux’s one is The Shadow of the Torturer).
Darn you, Steve Wright! 
(“Missed it by THAT much!”)
Huckleberry Finn
“I had just been through hell and must have looked like death warmed over walking into the saloon, because when I asked the bartender whether they served zombies he said, ‘Sure, what’ll you have?’”
“They called him Moshe the Beadle, as though he had never had a surname in his life.”
“They called him Moshe the Beadle, as though he had never had a surname in his life.”
Whoops. Sorry for the double post.
My personal all-time favorite opening line, though I’m not surprised it hasn’t appeared yet:
“I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing;–that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;–and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;–Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,–I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me.”
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy