Friday 56 and Book Beginnings (Sept. 30)

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader
(If you have to improvise, that's ok.)
*Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it)
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post in the Linky here. Add the post url, not your blog url.
*It's that simple.

Book Beginning is hosted by Rose City Reader.  All you have to do is share the opening line of the book you're reading and what you think about it.  Check out the other posts here.

My book this week is The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham.  It is about a man who leaves his family to paint and the toll his obsession takes on him and those around him.

Beginning:

I confess that when first I made acquaintance with Charles Strickland I never for a moment discerned that there was in him anything out of the ordinary.

It sounds like no one did.  Maybe that's why he up and left.

Friday 56:

It was tantalizing to get no more than hints into a character that interested me so much.  It was like making one's way through a mutilated manuscript.  I received the impression of a life which was a bitter struggle against every sort of difficulty; but I realized that much which would have seemed horrible to most people did not in the least affect him.

I haven't actually gotten this far in the book yet but this does make me wonder what sort of horrible things he's talking about.  I've never read anything by Maugham before and this one hasn't really grabbed me yet.  I will stick with it and hope that this little snippet is a sign of good things to come.