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Before the advent of minimalism, soaring real estate prices, or the Kindle, the books one kept on their shelves made them, well, a kind of open book to their guests. Will Schwalbe, founder of Cookstr.com and previously the editor in chief at Hyperion Books, recently penned a touching memoir entitled The End of Your Life Book Club (Knopf, October 2012), which recounts the literature he and his extraordinary mother, Mary Anne—a former director of admissions at Harvard and strong voice for international human rights who died in 2009—shared after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Invited to a private dinner at Schwalbe’s Manhattan apartment, the Inquisitive Guest noticed that the airy space was not overrun by books, as one might expect, but rather art. Though many are still keen to size up an individual by the books that he or she keeps (ahem), some literary figures are apparently now able to avoid the cliché of wall-to-wall hardcovers at home. Inspired by this intimate, bookish soirée, the Inquisitive Guest, who happened to be heading to Los Angeles, set off to ask actors, directors, and at least one author how they display their books.

Click here to discover how Joseph Gordon Levitt, Emma Roberts, Salman Rushdie, and others display their book collections