Blogger Kate Shatzkin turned to the Enoch Pratt Free Library for advice. Here's an excerpt from the answer prepared by Deborah Taylor, the Pratt's School and Student Services Coordinator, and Selma Levi, children's librarian at the Central Library:

"Rowling’s language and wordplay, especially in the first two books, make the books easy to read and understand but parents may find some of the imagery and circumstances in which Harry finds himself, a bit frightening for very young children. Each of the first two books builds to a very intense concluding episode. Parents should know how their child might react to a very high level of drama. From Book Three on, the books get increasingly dark and explore even more emotionally intense areas."

Mezrich, who’s 40, says he likes to live vicariously through the capers of his over-achieving characters. But, he pretty much is one himself: He graduated from Harvard. He’s published 10 books, and like the last one, his latest title is set to become a movie.

His book jacket photo shows a boyish man with wire-rim glasses and a cool leather jacket at odds with an ever-so-slightly nebbish grin. “Part of it is I am a geeky kid at heart who couldn’t get laid,” he said this week by phone from a hotel in New York. “I’m kind of like that guy in a corner who’s watching it all go on.” ...

[A]s much press as Accidental Billionaires is getting, Ben Mezrich can’t seem to dodge the claims that his non-fiction is, well, a bit on the fiction side. No one’s denying his stories are fun reads. It’s that they say they’re a little bit too fun, that some of the most salacious details have an unfortunate tendency to be unprovable.

Accidental Billionaires has Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who didn’t talk to Mezrich for the account, eating koala meat on one occasion and leaving a party with a Victoria Secret model on another. In one entirely fictionalized scene, Mezrich imagines what it would have been like if Zuckerberg really did break into a residence hall to steal data, as he thinks he did but cannot say for sure. For pages, he has Zuckerberg sneaking around, crouching in the dark, hiding behind a sofa as a couple has paragraphs worth of foreplay.

And Mezrich pumps scenes full of descriptive elements, the sort of little things one wouldn’t necessarily remember from the day before, let alone from years ago. The way an incidental streamer drifted to the floor. How someone coughed slightly. A shrug. “You have to remember what you are reading,” Mezrich says. “You didn’t pick up a textbook. You didn’t pick up a documentary. You read it in that light.”

Mezrich readily admits that bits and pieces of the story he might not know, he “imagines” to the best of his ability. He argues that he’s not making things up so much as taking artistic liberties to make the books readable. And, he adds, he’s disclosed those liberties in authors notes at the front of each book. “There’s definitely old-world journalists who don’t get what I do,” he says. “I clearly fall under non-fiction. I don’t think anyone in the book would feel differently.”

Some folks at Facebook apparently do feel differently. The company’s spokesman Elliot Schrage has been widely quoted lambasting the book, saying it’s as believable as a Hollywood bodice-ripper. “Ben Mezrich clearly aspires to be the Jackie Collins or Danielle Steele of Silicon Valley,” he says. “In fact his own publisher put it best. ‘The book isn’t reportage. It’s big juicy fun.’ ” (Schrage quotes Doubleday publicist Todd Doughty who made that statement to a New York Times writer.)

We should approach books with intellectual honesty, and not use them simply as a signal for companionship and conversation. But I’m happy to chat about a book with fellow readers — strangers even. Consider it an impromptu mini-book club.

Other Read Streeters feel differently. In response to a post last week on this topic, Gail said she was annoyed when strangers asked her about her books. Lenn said the Kindle and other e-book readers free us to read only books that interest us, without worrying about what other people think.

Have you had a close encounter with a stranger over a book -- and how did it go?

Among the early front runners is an edition of Iceworld by Hal Clement. The plot involves a high school science teacher and inter-planetary drug running. No wonder the cover looks so goofy.

So take some time out of the blistering heat today to go through that pile of books in your basement. Maybe you'll win a trip to the fiuture. (Let us know the price of Google stock.)

"He is not expected to live," said Malachy McCourt, himself an author and performer. Frank McCourt, shown here in 2007, was recently treated for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, but his brother says he had been doing well until about two weeks ago, when he contracted meningitis.

"He was out and about, being active, doing talks and so forth," Malachy McCourt said.

Here's a video of Frank McCourt on writing about poverty, which helped define his childhood in Ireland and was a theme of Angela's Ashes.

AP photo

For such a stunning moment in history, the moon landing -- and the space race itself -- produced surprisingly few great books. If I had to pick one, it would be The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, which describes the earliest days of the space program, from the perspective of the fighter pilots-turned astronauts. Wolfe does a great job describing their daring and heroism -- and how they bristled at the space bureaucracy that tried to rein in their maverick nature.

Here's another way to get into the moon mood: a video by Baltimore Sun photographer Karl Merton Ferron on the race to the moon.

Here's James Wolcott in VF (and thanks to Michael Schaub at the Bookslut blog for noting it): How can I impress strangers with the gem-like flame of my literary passion if it’s a digital slate I’m carrying around, trying not to get it all thumbprinty? Books not only furnish a room, to paraphrase the title of an Anthony Powell novel, but also accessorize our outfits. They help brand our identities.

And Molly Flatt on the Guardian's book blog: Novels aren't just sources of solitary cogitation. They are social objects, and we use them to brandish our identities, mark our allegiances and broker our relationships. ... Thanks to the intimate connection between story and reader, they impact upon us very personally, and can drive otherwise undemonstrative folk to feel they have a right – nay duty – to confront complete strangers with their zeal, and have thus been responsible for some of the most unexpected human encounters I've had.

Baltimore Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum

I'm a strict constructionist when it comes to non-fiction. I have tremendous respect for authors such as John McPhee, who can make complex subjects come alive with their reporting and writing. But I have little patience for folks who bend the truth to suit their needs. That's why I'll probably never pick up a James Frey book. Mezrich's method of crafting composite characters and embellishing scenes has been deconstructed and criticized before, notably in relation to Busting Vegas his book about MIT kids who developed a method to win big at blackjack in Vegas.

Now, critics are asking whether he took the same liberties in his new book about the founding of Facebook. The Baltimore Sun will look at the issue this Sunday, and readers can ask Mezrich when he appears at a reading at the Enoch Pratt library Tuesday, July 21 at 6:30 p.m.

But as a strict constructionist, I'm giving Mezrich a pass -- for now. Busting Vegas includes a disclaimer that some events and individuals are composites. In Accidental Billionaires, a more prominent author's note says "details of settings and descriptions have been changed or imagined." I do worry that Mezrich, in interviews, seems to brush off the disclaimers, as if his narratives build a "truth" that is truer than the facts. ("The idea that the story is true, is more important than being able to prove that it's true," he told the Boston Globe last year.) That's a losing argument, Ben. Drop it.

So caveat emptor. Enjoy the book, but don't confuse it with real life -- any more than you'd consider reality TV shows to be reality.

According to British news reports, the beach that inspired Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse has been sold. The 76-acre property, in the southwestern tip of England, has a view of the Godrevy Island lighthouse. The winning bid at auction was about $130,000, less than buildable lots on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Woolf's autobiographical novel, published in 1927, was set in the Hebrides but drew on her childhood holidays in St. Ives, where she stayed at a house that had a view of the island, according to The Independent.

That report comes a few days after The Telegraph reported that Daphne Du Maurier's former Cornwall home, which was the setting for her novel, Frenchman's Creek, was for sale. The price: about $3.3 million.

Eiffel's Tower by Jill Jonnes. Jonnes, who lives in Baltimore, has crafted a cultural history of the Paris landmark and its creator, who was vilified by many while the tower was being built. She also weaves in Thomas Edison, Annie Oakley and other prominent personalities who attended the world's fair that brought us the tower, though I found their stories less compelling than Gustave Eiffel's.

The Discovery of France by Graham Robb. A full century after the revolution, France remained divided by a dizzying mess of linguistic and cultural barriers. Robb takes a very human look at the patchwork nation, examining its people and their customs -- while noting the forces that eventually brought unity.

The Flaneur by Edmund White. In capturing the joy of wandering Paris' streets, White delivers short profiles of interesting characters, major historic events and neighborhoods.

Of the mysteries I've read recently, I'd pick Louis Bayard's The Black Tower over Cara Black's Murder on the Ile St. Louis and Fred Vargas' The Chalk Circle Man.