Judging a book by the first 2 paragraphs

Last night I was visiting with a couple friends when we started talking about books. I read a book that one of my friends highly recommended. It had a great plot and a good message, but I found the writing to be a rather non-linear with lots of extraneous details. We decided to read the first two paragraphs of several books aloud to see if a person could actually make a reasonable judgment about the overall writing quality in a book by the first page. In my opinion, it seemed to be a pretty good indicator; however the experiment wasn't very scientific, so check it out for yourself. I would be interested to hear your methods for "screening" the quality of a book--leave a comment.

By the way, here is the beginning of a very good book (clear, succinct, and very profound):
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Gen 1:1-5 ESV)