The only real solution, I have begun to advise, is that your average book collector choose to live as a hermit. This is a foolproof way of avoiding judgement. Alas, in many ways the life of a book collector is doomed to the distraction of romance, if only because the zeitgeist is infected with the idea that a bookshop is a great place to romantically approach strangers, a plague for which romantic comedies have a great deal to answer.
