Buried inside the LibraryThing website (think MySpace for OCD literati) is “I See Dead People’s Books,” a catalogue of the libraries of 33 deceased luminaries, including Marie Antoinette, Thomas Jefferson, Ezra Pound, Theodore Dreiser, and Tupac Shakur.

While browsing, you may discover some excellent books you hadn’t heard of (like Aboard the Flying Swan, by Stanley A. Wolper, found in Ernest Hemingway’s library). Also, by peeking at the titles in a dead person’s library, you’ll get fresh insight into his or her intellectual nooks and crannies — sure, we more or less get why Aspects of Chinese Painting, by Alan Priest, was found in e. e. cummings’s library, but Machiavelli’s The Prince in Tupac’s library? Who knew?