Since my job involves buying books for other people to read, I take more than an academic interest in Benjamin Errett’s “Elements of Taste: Understanding What We Like and Why.” Errett basically clumps together various forms of entertainment (specific books, movies, songs, and so on) into broad categories based on the five physical tastes of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umani. This schema works surprisingly well and is fun to apply on one’s one after Errett explains how it all works. I can easily see that my own tastes run to “bitter” and away from “sweet,” something which holds true whether we are talking books, music, or items in a grocery store. “The Elements of Taste” succeeds as an easy to read guide to the overflowing banquet of entertainment choices we all face. Advanced readers of this book might also want to check out Tom Vanderbilt’s more substantial “You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice.”