For as long as there have been books, we have judged each other by what we read. Indeed, one of the laments in an ebook world is that we no longer have one another's bookshelves by which to compare ourselves. The closest approximation are social reading sites like Goodreads which let you compare your virtual shelf with those of your friends, always an entertaining exercise. Of course, the corollary advantage of ebooks is that no one needs to know what you're reading. It's safe to read a "guilty pleasure" on the train without fear of nasty looks from your snobby or prudish seatmate. Which, these days, is a necessity. We seem to me to be living in an age of opprobrium, where one of the final frontiers of acceptable bigotry is in matters of taste. Examples of things it's fashionable, maybe even required to despise are everywhere. Most recently comes to mind the widely shared live-tweeting of someone's snark-filled reading of Fifty Shades of Grey (#50ShadesofShade). The Fifty Shades books are a series I've yet to hear anyone admit to have enjoyed, yet obviously many people have as they've sold a gazillion copies and the film has just been cast.