Tasteful Monochrome

I’m getting old. The most interesting thing in those photos was the stack of old paperbacks under Ava Gardner’s elbow.

They’re in French, to begin with. Could she read French? They look to be cheap mysteries and such – the sort of thing that only a committed Francophone would read.

One is really surprising: a French edition of The World of Null-A by A. E. Van Vogt, a 1945 science-fiction pulp “classic”.

I’d guess that the photo was taken in France, and the books were just props.