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Ironically, the first time I remember being struck by an opening line was from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury:

"The seller of lightning-rods arrived just ahead of the storm."

It's almost too forward — but I loved the visual. It's hard to not be hooked by the impending storm.

I currently have a copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes laying here in front of me.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Joan Didion)

Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (Paul Zindel)

The Things They Carried (Tim O' Brien)

This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)
Essentially a children's sci-fi novel, but it doesn't read that way.

A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway)

My personal favorite (along with his short stories, which I highly recommend), but if it's your first time reading Hemingway, might be better to go with The Sun Also Rises.

Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates)

On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
*One of my personal favorites, but most people either love or hate it, so maybe save this towards the end.

On my own reading list:

Speedboat (Renata Adler)

Money (Martin Amis)

Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Wow, sad day. RIP, Mr. Bradbury.

Fahreneheit 451 is a book that I consider one of the most influential I've ever read (along with Nineteen Eighty Four), and I also enjoyed Something Wicked This Way Comes, and all the other Bradbury works I've read. There are still quite a few of his works that I haven't read, so maybe I'll pick up something else of his and read it soon as a tribute.

1. Nexus (Ramez Naam)

2. Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)

3. The Fellowship of the Ring (J. R. R. Tolkien)

4. The Sin of Certainty (Peter Enns)

5. The Bible Tells Me So (Peter Enns)

6. Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations

7. Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)

8. Elantris (Brandon Sanderson)

9. A Wild Sheep Chase (Haruki Murakami)

10. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Haruki Murakami)

11. Freedom TM (Daniel Suarez)

12. Lightning (Dean Koontz)

13. Daemons (Daniel Suarez)

14. Foundation and Earth (Isaac Asimov)

15. Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)

16. Fear and Loathing in Las Veges (Hunter S. Thompson)

17. Foundation's Edge (Isaac Asimov)

18. The Doors of Perception (Aldous Huxley)

19. Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)

20. Tortilla Flat (John Steinbeck)

21. The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)