Kenwood: a little light reading, part 2.

I've long been puzzling, off and on (mainly off), over the identity of the left-hand volume (seen above on display in the sunroom). It does seem to have been placed there deliberately; John was never a man to let an opportunity for a plug go by, and so the fact that the other book, a contemporary U.S. edition of his collected works, is on display mid-photo session is hardly surprising.
But what was the left-hand one? I thought it may have been something to do with calligraphy (given the cover, and the fact that John (not even ostensibly) and Cyn (actually) both studied lettering at art school), but then Ron de Bruijn sent me a very hi-res scan of the above photo. We blew up that corner, and after much squinting (and a moment when the title appeared to be something to do with perverts), there it was: Proverbs For Daily Living, published in 1967 by the Peter Pauper Press:



It's a collection of aphorisms, arranged according to date, from January to December. To illustrate, here is the page which corresponds to John's birthday:


As ever, odd coincidences are there for those who wish to find them:


So, there we have it. Apparently, he also had illustrated adages of a similar type hanging on the walls of the kitchen. (Why did John chose to highlight this particular book, assuming he did? At a wild guess, it may have been something to do with Mimi; a lot of the proverbs in the book sound like Mimi.)