Thanks for all the feedback!
As far as the book being the subject, well I may have done it subconsciously. I owned a used bookstore for years and I always used to say you can tell a lot about a person by what they read. I would only say this to customers who had good taste, though. You can also tell a lot about them by what they sell. I'm not trying to defend the image. Perhaps the man should have been more of the focus. But that is just not how my psychology works in a used bookstore, given I owned one, and I developed certain ideas about books and the things they revealed about people. I still look at what people are buying in the bookstore. So maybe the image is not as objective as I once thought, as it reveals my perspective having worked in this field which is probably different from those who have not.