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The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge: Ultimate Book List

Table of Contents

Inside Rory Gilmore’s Personal Library 

According to Australian writer Patrick Lenton, these are all the books mentioned throughout the entire Gilmore Girls series.

This gives you the perfect opportunity to turn it into a reading challenge! <3

I’ve sorted the books into categories for you.

And even if you’re not a fan of the show, this list includes some of the most iconic books that everyone should read at least once.

“Oh, do you see the books? Feel it. Feels good, right? Now smell it. Nothing, nothing smells like that.”

Rory Gilmore

Classics

“Take some books and read; that’s an immense help; and books are always good company if you have the right sort.”

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Classic Literature

  1. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
  2. Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
  3. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
  4. Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
  5. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
  6. Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
  7. The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
  8. Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
  9. The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
  10. A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
  11. David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
  12. Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
  13. Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens
  14. Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens
  15. Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
  16. Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
  17. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
  18. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  19. Demons, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  20. Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
  21. Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol
  22. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  23. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, by Ernest Hemingway
  24. Daisy Miller, by Henry James
  25. The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka
  26. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
  27. Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville
  28. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
  29. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
  30. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
  31. Dracula, by Bram Stoker
  32. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
  33. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
  34. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
  35. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
  36. Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White
  37. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
  38. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

Drama / Play / Tragedy / Comedy

  1. The Comedy of Errors, by William Shakespeare
  2. Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
  3. Henry IV, Part I, by William Shakespeare
  4. Henry IV, Part II, by William Shakespeare
  5. Henry V, by William Shakespeare
  6. Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare
  7. Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
  8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare
  9. The Merry Wives of Windsor, by William Shakespeare
  10. Othello, by William Shakespeare
  11. Richard III, by William Shakespeare
  12. Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
  13. The Crucible, by Arthur Miller
  14. Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand
  15. Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw
  16. Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles

Modern Classics

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

  1. The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
  2. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
  3. The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford
  4. A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster
  5. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
  6. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  7. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
  8. The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
  9. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
  10. Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
  11. Ulysses, by James Joyce
  12. On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
  13. The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
  14. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
  15. Night, by Elie Wiesel
  16. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
  17. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe
  18. Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier

Books Rory Read on Gilmore Girls, Part 1

These are just some of the most popular books Rory read on Gilmore Girls. 

Not sponsored. You can find links to all of the books on my Amazon Storefront. This may be helpful if you were already considering reading them. If you make a purchase, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you, which helps me continue creating content.

Contemporary Classics 

“He wants to put his story next to hers.” 

Toni Morrinson, Beloved

  1. The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy
  2. The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende
  3. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon
  4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
  5. Less Than Zero, by Bret Easton Ellis
  6. Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
  7. The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber
  8. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
  9. Ironweed, by William Kennedy
  10. Small Island, by Andrea Levy
  11. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
  12. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
  13. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
  14. The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
  15. The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan
  16. Old School, by Tobias Wolff

Poetry and Poems

“I am glad there are Books. They are better than Heaven, for that is unavoidable, while one may miss these.”

Emily Dickinson, New Poems of Emily Dickinson

 
  1. Beowulf, by Anonymous
  2. The Libation Bearers, by Aeschylus
  3. The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
  4. New Poems, by Emily Dickinson
  5. Sonnet 43, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  6. The Iliad, by Homer
  7. Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos, by Julia de Burgos
  8. Howl and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg
  9. Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
  10. Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke
  11. The Complete Poems, by Anne Sexton
  12. Haiku, Volume 2: Spring, by R. H. Blyth
  13. The Sonnets, by William Shakespeare
  14. Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems, by Edgar Allan Poe
  15. The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe

Folklore, Tales and Childrens Literature

“You have plenty of courage, I am sure … The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty.”

L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

  1. Cinderella, by the Brothers Grimm
  2. Rapunzel, by the Brothers Grimm
  3. Snow White and Rose Red, by the Brothers Grimm
  4. Goldilocks and the Three Bears / Bears Should Share!, by Alvin Granowsky
  5. The Little Match Girl, by Hans Christian Andersen
  6. Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi
  7. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
  8. The Scarecrow of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
  9. Babe: The Gallant Pig, by Dick King-Smith
  10. Bambi: A Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten
  11. Horton Hears a Who!, by Dr. Seuss
  12. How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, by Dr. Seuss
  13. Eloise at the Plaza, by Kay Thompson
  14. Emily the Strange, by Roger Reger
  15. Freaky Friday, by Mary Rodgers
  16. Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
  17. Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, by Sholem Aleichem

Books Rory Read on Gilmore Girls, Part 2

These are just some of the most popular books Rory read on Gilmore Girls. 

Not sponsored. You can find links to all of the books on my Amazon Storefront. This may be helpful if you were already considering reading them. If you make a purchase, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you, which helps me continue creating content.

Fiction

“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime…”

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Literary Fiction

  1. Eva Luna, by Isabel Allende
  2. Brick Lane, by Monica Ali
  3. A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster
  4. Atonement, by Ian McEwan
  5. Quattrocento, by James McKean
  6. Property, by Valerie Martin
  7. How to Breathe Underwater, by Julie Orringer
  8. The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
  9. A Quiet Storm, by Rachel Howzell Hall
  10. The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
  11. Sacred Time, by Ursula Hegi
  12. The Song Reader, by Lisa Tucker
  13. The Song of Names, by Norman Lebrecht
  14. Oracle Night, by Paul Auster
  15. The Collected Stories, by Eudora Welty
  16. Empire Falls, by Richard Russo

Historical Ficition

  1. Eva Luna, by Isabel Allende
  2. The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
  3. Atonement, by Ian McEwan
  4. The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar, by Robert Alexander
  5. Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
  6. Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious
  7. Sacred Time, by Ursula Hegi
  8. The Miracle Worker, by William Gibson

Surreal Fiction

  1. Eva Luna, by Isabel Allende
  2. Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
  3. Oracle Night, by Paul Auster
  4. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
  5. Just a Couple of Days, by Tony Vigorito

Sci-Fi/ Speculative Fiction

  1. Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
  2. Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
  3. Time and Again, by Jack Finney
  4. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
  5. Galápagos, by Kurt Vonnegut

Humor/Satire

  1. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain
  2. The Celebrated Jumping Frog, by Mark Twain
  3. The Code of the Woosters, by P. G. Wodehouse
  4. The Nanny Diaries, by Emma McLaughlin
  5. The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford

Contemporary Fiction

  1. My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
  2. The Nanny Diaries, by Emma McLaughlin
  3. Love Story, by Erich Segal
  4. The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
  5. The Song Reader, by Lisa Tucker

Fantasy

“Books! And cleverness! “

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling

  1. A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin
  2. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis
  3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J. K. Rowling
  4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J. K. Rowling
  5. The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien
  6. The Fellowship of the Ring, by J. R. R. Tolkien
  7. The Return of the King, by J. R. R. Tolkien
  8. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire
  9. The Witches of Eastwick, by John Updike

Mystery/Thriller

“Everyone loves a conspiracy.”

Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

  1. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
  2. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
  3. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
  4. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
  5. Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
  6. A Quiet Storm, by Rachel Howzell Hall (mystery/thriller elements)
  7. R is for Ricochet, by Sue Grafton
  8. S is for Silence, by Sue Grafton
  9. Christine, by Stephen King
  10. Cujo, by Stephen King
  11. The Shining, by Stephen King
  12. Rita Hayworth (aka Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption), by Stephen King
  13. Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin
  14. The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin
  15. Fletch, by Gregory McDonald
  16. The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett
  17. Primary Colors, by Joe Klein (political thriller)
  18. What Happened to Baby Jane?, by Henry Farrell
  19. Summer of Fear, by T. Jefferson Parker
  20. Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective, by Donald J. Sobol

Books Rory Read on Gilmore Girls, Part 3

These are just some of the most popular books Rory read on Gilmore Girls. 

Not sponsored. You can find links to all of the books on my Amazon Storefront. This may be helpful if you were already considering reading them. If you make a purchase, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you, which helps me continue creating content.

Memoirs and Biographies

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

Memoir

  1. A Girl from Yamhill, by Beverly Cleary
  2. Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton
  3. Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain
  4. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, by Simone de Beauvoir
  5. Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt
  6. The Dirt, by Mötley Crüe
  7. The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank
  8. Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
  9. I Feel Bad About My Neck, by Nora Ephron
  10. Autobiography of a Face, by Lucy Grealy
  11. Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen
  12. The Meaning of Consuelo, by Judith Ortiz Cofer
  13. My Life in Orange, by Tim Guest
  14. Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen
  15. Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
  16. Rescuing Patty Hearst, by Virginia Holman
  17. Revolution from Within, by Gloria Steinem
  18. Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov
  19. The Opposite of Fate, by Amy Tan
  20. Truth & Beauty, by Ann Patchett
  21. The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller
  22. The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
  23. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed

Biography 

  1. Monsieur Proust, by Celeste Albaret
  2. The Bielski Brothers, by Peter Duffy
  3. Notes of a Dirty Old Man, by Charles Bukowski
  4. Pushkin: A Biography, by T. J. Binyon
  5. The Executioner’s Song, by Norman Mailer
  6. Please Kill Me, by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain
  7. Secrets of the Flesh, by Judith Thurman
  8. Savage Beauty, by Nancy Milford
  9. Eleanor Roosevelt, by Blanche Wiesen Cook
  10. Moliere: A Biography, by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
  11. My Life as Author and Editor, by H. L. Mencken

Collected Letters

  1. Letters of Ayn Rand, by Ayn Rand
  2. Letters of Edith Wharton, by R. W. B. Lewis
  3. Selected Letters of Dawn Powell, by Dawn Powell

Historical 

“Nobody asks for a life of hardship, but it is those hardships that shape us.”

Isabel Allende, Daughter of Fortune

  1. The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar, by Robert Alexander
  2. Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende
  3. Sanctuary, by William Faulkner
  4. A Monetary History of the United States, by Milton Friedman
  5. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, by Erik Larson
  6. Seabiscuit: An American Legend, by Laura Hillenbrand
  7. Driving Miss Daisy, by Alfred Uhrv
  8. The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History, by Norman Mailer
  9. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
  10. Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, by William Tecumseh Sherman
  11. Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall
  12. The Archidamian War, by Donald Kagan
  13. The Fall of the Athenian Empire, by Donald Kagan
  14. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, by Donald Kagan
  15. The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, by Donald Kagan
  16. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon
  17. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  18. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach
  19. The Vanishing Newspaper, by Philip Meyer
  20. We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet Interviews, by Daniel Sinker
  21. The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant

Femminist 

“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely.”

Simone de Beauvoir , Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

  1. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, by Susan Faludi
  2. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells
  3. Deenie, by Judy Blume
  4. Gender Trouble, by Judith Butler
  5. Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton
  6. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D. H. Lawrence
  7. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, by Simone de Beauvoir
  8. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
  9. Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
  10. Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
  11. Property, by Valerie Martin
  12. A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf
  13. The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir
  14. Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette, by Judith Thurman
  15. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
  16. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee
  17. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
  18. Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susann

Political

“The thing about lies is that you have to keep making them up to cover the ones you already told.”

Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

  1. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, by Al Franken
  2. It Takes a Village, by Hillary Rodham Clinton
  3. George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President, by Jacob Weisberg
  4. Mencken’s Chrestomathy, by H. L. Mencken
  5. A Monetary History of the United States, by Milton Friedman
  6. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
  7. Robert’s Rules of Order, by Henry Robert
  8. The Pump House Gang, by Tom Wolfe
  9. The Last Empire: Essays 1992–2000, by Gore Vidal
  10. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
  11. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, by Barrington Moore

Dystopian

“What’s it going to be then, eh?”

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

  1. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
  2. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
  3. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
  4. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
  5. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
  6. 1984, by George Orwell
  7. Contact, by Carl Sagan
  8. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Philosophical

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  1. The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri
  2. The Art of Living, by Epictetus
  3. Candide, by Voltaire
  4. Ethics, by Spinoza
  5. The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels
  6. Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse
  7. The Portable Nietzsche, by Friedrich Nietzsche
  8. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, by William E. Cain, et al.
  9. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, by Barrington Moore (political philosophy)
  10. Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
  11. The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
  12. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera

Psychology

“It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.”

Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart

  1. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
  2. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
  3. Lisa and David, by Dr. Theodore Isaac Rubin, M.D.
  4. Ironweed, by William J. Kennedy
  5. The Manticore, by Robertson Davies
  6. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
  7. Sybil, by Flora Rheta Schreiber
  8. The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe

Self-Help & Personal Development 

“The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.”

Marie Kondo, The Life-Chaning Magic of Tidying Up

Self-Help

  1. Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom
  2. He’s Just Not That Into You, by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
  3. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, by John Gray
  4. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo
  5. What Color is Your Parachute?, by Richard Nelson Bolles
  6. Who Moved My Cheese?, by Spencer Johnson
  7. Revolution from Within, by Gloria Steinem

Guides and Personal Development

  1. The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom
  2. Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
  3. The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby
  4. Europe through the Back Door, by Rick Steves
  5. Yoga for Dummies, by Georg Feuerstein and Larry Payne

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