First Impressions

I've been visiting the Good Ol' Library a lot this summer and have found something: I DO judge a book by its cover! Call me prejudice, but if a book has some idiotic picture of a teenage girl/boy/Dragon on the cover with the look of outrageous astonishment (See cover of 'the Gammage Cup', 'Nancy drew,' etc.), I'm not going to check it out. Period.
Then there are the cliche titles like, "Norgblats, the Dragon," "The life and times of Susan Decrue," "Love, Jim"... basically if it has "dragon-(Insert intense-sounding noun here)" or Some woman's name and the picture of white birds on the front, or anything with Scarlet, Black, Gold, or Midnight in them.
On the other hand, there are the perfectly wonderful titles, "Does My Head Look Big in This?" "Stargirl," "Of Mice and Men," "Evil Genius," "To Kill a Mocking Bird," and others that completely grab you.
I also judge heavily on the first sentence (which, coincidentally, is the hardest part about writing for me). The first sentence will tell you everything about an author's writing style, and whether or not it'll be any good. The second I read, "There once was--" I slam the book shut and throw at the opposite wall. We all know "Once upon a time," and "Long ago, in a land far, far away," are all overused, but so are things people use when they think they're being original, like when they start with an Onomatopoeia. Boom! Wham! Pow! If you think I'm on the edge of my seat, I'm not. I'm slouched even farther down and groaning. Of course, Onomatopoeia's aren't all bad, so long as they're different enough to make me actually concentrate when reading them. Not to the extent that they take attention away from the story, but that they make the reader actually pay attention, making them wonder, "What on earth makes THAT noise?!" Like Kap-TWING! SHLOOP! Thwallump!
C.S. Lewis is the perfect example of originality. 'The Horse and His Boy.' It's different, and you start asking questions before you even open it, "Wait, isn't the boy supposed to own the horse?" "What's so special about this Horse, anyway?" "Why does he HAVE a boy?"
The title was equipped with a beautiful, water-colored cover, with a Horse. And a Boy. So simple. So intriguing.
And then, In a different book the same series of Narnia, "The Dawn Treader," where the first thing you read is one of the best sentences a book has ever been started with: "There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." Different, Funny, something we can all relate to in someway: Brilliant!! It started with a usual, "There was..." But then a name that was familiar, yet so different, followed by a phrase we can all understand without further explanation.
The point of a book isn't to just Plop the entire plot and characters in front of the reader and say, 'here it is.' The evidence of mystery is why people read! titles/covers/first words should create questions instantly in a person's head, then slowly answering them while still making new questions as the story progresses. Stories shouldn't be handed to us on silver platters, we should have to work for them, fighting for our own understanding and interpretation of characters and morals in the book.