Does anyone have any ideas on how to start a book?

Read clic literature. It's written so much better than our post modern crap, and represents the purest forms of plot and characters; not muddied up like our over-processed works of fiction today. When I read something that has just been published, I can FEEL how bored the author must have been writing it. It was written, chances are, on a strict dead-line; very forced.