Passing by a furniture shop I noticed this set of books used to decorate one of their tables. This is an A.I. retrieval of the books that were there. The original image is in the previous photograph. Always curious, I askedAI to investigate this.bundle of books.

Far left Charles Ledré, Pie X:

A biography of Pope Pius X. The author, title and Paris publisher on the spine match a 1952 Spes edition.

Third from the left, on the badly flaked spine : probably Henry Bordeaux, Le Chevalier de l’air, vie héroïque de Guynemer. The surviving fragments fit the title of this biography of the French First World War fighter pilot Georges Guynemer.

Fourth from the left Pearl S. Buck, La Mère. The Stock translation of The Mother, her 1934 novel about a peasant woman raising a family in rural China. The spine still shows 270 francs.

Near the middle, with the yellow star: Abbé Charles Thellier de Poncheville, Tout l’Évangile dans toute la vie. The spine gives Spes, Paris, 1937, which matches a catalogued paperback.

A copy from that year in the Cambrai diocesan archive has an introductory letter by Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pius XII.

Immediately to its right Gilbert Cesbron, Les Saints vont en enfer (The Saints Go to Hell). First published in 1952, it’s a novel about the French worker-priests who took ordinary jobs to share the lives of industrial workers.

The Cesbron is the one I’d be most tempted to open. I like the accident of its sitting next to The Whole Gospel in the Whole of Life. The two spines almost read as a question and an answer.