Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge
Inside Rory Gilmore’s Library
This blog post contains affiliate links. Read the disclaimers here. The products are selectively curated by me. If you buy something through my links, I may earn an affiliate commission at absolutely no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I genuinely love.
Intro: 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.
@warnerbrostv Adding these to our TBR. #BookTok #GilmoreGirls ♬ original sound - warnerbrostv
“Oh, do you see the books? Feel it. Feels good, right? Now smell it. Nothing, nothing smells like that.”
Rory Gilmore
Table of Contents
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
- Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
- Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
- Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
- Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
- Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
- Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
- The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
- Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
- The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
- A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
- David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
- Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
- Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens
- Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens
- Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
- Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
- The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
- Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Demons, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
- Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol
- The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Snows of Kilimanjaro, by Ernest Hemingway
- Daisy Miller, by Henry James
- The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka
- A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
- Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville
- Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
- Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
- The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
- Dracula, by Bram Stoker
- Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
- Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White
- Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
Drama / Play / Tragedy / Comedy
- The Comedy of Errors, by William Shakespeare
- Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
- Henry IV, Part I, by William Shakespeare
- Henry IV, Part II, by William Shakespeare
- Henry V, by William Shakespeare
- Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare
- Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare
- The Merry Wives of Windsor, by William Shakespeare
- Othello, by William Shakespeare
- Richard III, by William Shakespeare
- Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
- The Crucible, by Arthur Miller
- Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand
- Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw
- 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
- The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
- The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
- The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford
- A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster
- As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
- The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
- The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
- The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
- Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
- Ulysses, by James Joyce
- On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
- The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
- The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
- Night, by Elie Wiesel
- Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe
- 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
- The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy
- The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
- Less Than Zero, by Bret Easton Ellis
- Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
- The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber
- The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
- Ironweed, by William Kennedy
- Small Island, by Andrea Levy
- Beloved, by Toni Morrison
- Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
- The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
- The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
- The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan
- 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
- Beowulf, by Anonymous
- The Libation Bearers, by Aeschylus
- The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
- New Poems, by Emily Dickinson
- Sonnet 43, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- The Iliad, by Homer
- Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos, by Julia de Burgos
- Howl and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg
- Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
- Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke
- The Complete Poems, by Anne Sexton
- Haiku, Volume 2: Spring, by R. H. Blyth
- The Sonnets, by William Shakespeare
- Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems, by Edgar Allan Poe
- 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
- Cinderella, by the Brothers Grimm
- Rapunzel, by the Brothers Grimm
- Snow White and Rose Red, by the Brothers Grimm
- Goldilocks and the Three Bears / Bears Should Share!, by Alvin Granowsky
- The Little Match Girl, by Hans Christian Andersen
- Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
- The Scarecrow of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
- Babe: The Gallant Pig, by Dick King-Smith
- Bambi: A Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten
- Horton Hears a Who!, by Dr. Seuss
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, by Dr. Seuss
- Eloise at the Plaza, by Kay Thompson
- Emily the Strange, by Roger Reger
- Freaky Friday, by Mary Rodgers
- Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
- 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
- Eva Luna, by Isabel Allende
- Brick Lane, by Monica Ali
- A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster
- Atonement, by Ian McEwan
- Quattrocento, by James McKean
- Property, by Valerie Martin
- How to Breathe Underwater, by Julie Orringer
- The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
- A Quiet Storm, by Rachel Howzell Hall
- The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
- Sacred Time, by Ursula Hegi
- The Song Reader, by Lisa Tucker
- The Song of Names, by Norman Lebrecht
- Oracle Night, by Paul Auster
- The Collected Stories, by Eudora Welty
- Empire Falls, by Richard Russo
Historical Ficition
- Eva Luna, by Isabel Allende
- The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
- Atonement, by Ian McEwan
- The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar, by Robert Alexander
- Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
- Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious
- Sacred Time, by Ursula Hegi
- The Miracle Worker, by William Gibson
Surreal Fiction
- Eva Luna, by Isabel Allende
- Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
- Oracle Night, by Paul Auster
- Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
- Just a Couple of Days, by Tony Vigorito
Sci-Fi/ Speculative Fiction
- Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
- Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
- Time and Again, by Jack Finney
- The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
- Galápagos, by Kurt Vonnegut
Humor/Satire
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain
- The Celebrated Jumping Frog, by Mark Twain
- The Code of the Woosters, by P. G. Wodehouse
- The Nanny Diaries, by Emma McLaughlin
- The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford
Contemporary Fiction
- My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
- The Nanny Diaries, by Emma McLaughlin
- Love Story, by Erich Segal
- The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
- The Song Reader, by Lisa Tucker
Fantasy
“Books! And cleverness! “
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
- A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J. K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J. K. Rowling
- The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien
- The Fellowship of the Ring, by J. R. R. Tolkien
- The Return of the King, by J. R. R. Tolkien
- Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire
- The Witches of Eastwick, by John Updike
Mystery/Thriller
“Everyone loves a conspiracy.”
Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
- And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
- The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
- Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
- In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
- Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
- A Quiet Storm, by Rachel Howzell Hall (mystery/thriller elements)
- R is for Ricochet, by Sue Grafton
- S is for Silence, by Sue Grafton
- Christine, by Stephen King
- Cujo, by Stephen King
- The Shining, by Stephen King
- Rita Hayworth (aka Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption), by Stephen King
- Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin
- The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin
- Fletch, by Gregory McDonald
- The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett
- Primary Colors, by Joe Klein (political thriller)
- What Happened to Baby Jane?, by Henry Farrell
- Summer of Fear, by T. Jefferson Parker
- Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective, by Donald J. Sobol
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
- A Girl from Yamhill, by Beverly Cleary
- Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton
- Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain
- Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, by Simone de Beauvoir
- Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt
- The Dirt, by Mötley Crüe
- The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank
- Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
- I Feel Bad About My Neck, by Nora Ephron
- Autobiography of a Face, by Lucy Grealy
- Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen
- The Meaning of Consuelo, by Judith Ortiz Cofer
- My Life in Orange, by Tim Guest
- Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen
- Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
- Rescuing Patty Hearst, by Virginia Holman
- Revolution from Within, by Gloria Steinem
- Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov
- The Opposite of Fate, by Amy Tan
- Truth & Beauty, by Ann Patchett
- The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller
- The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
- Wild, by Cheryl Strayed
Biography
- Monsieur Proust, by Celeste Albaret
- The Bielski Brothers, by Peter Duffy
- Notes of a Dirty Old Man, by Charles Bukowski
- Pushkin: A Biography, by T. J. Binyon
- The Executioner’s Song, by Norman Mailer
- Please Kill Me, by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain
- Secrets of the Flesh, by Judith Thurman
- Savage Beauty, by Nancy Milford
- Eleanor Roosevelt, by Blanche Wiesen Cook
- Moliere: A Biography, by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
- My Life as Author and Editor, by H. L. Mencken
Collected Letters
- Letters of Ayn Rand, by Ayn Rand
- Letters of Edith Wharton, by R. W. B. Lewis
- 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
- The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar, by Robert Alexander
- Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende
- Sanctuary, by William Faulkner
- A Monetary History of the United States, by Milton Friedman
- The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, by Erik Larson
- Seabiscuit: An American Legend, by Laura Hillenbrand
- Driving Miss Daisy, by Alfred Uhrv
- The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History, by Norman Mailer
- The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
- Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, by William Tecumseh Sherman
- Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall
- The Archidamian War, by Donald Kagan
- The Fall of the Athenian Empire, by Donald Kagan
- The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, by Donald Kagan
- The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, by Donald Kagan
- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach
- The Vanishing Newspaper, by Philip Meyer
- We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet Interviews, by Daniel Sinker
- The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
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.
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
- Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, by Susan Faludi
- The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells
- Deenie, by Judy Blume
- Gender Trouble, by Judith Butler
- Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton
- Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D. H. Lawrence
- Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, by Simone de Beauvoir
- Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
- Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
- Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
- Property, by Valerie Martin
- A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf
- The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir
- Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette, by Judith Thurman
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee
- Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
- 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
- Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, by Al Franken
- It Takes a Village, by Hillary Rodham Clinton
- George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President, by Jacob Weisberg
- Mencken’s Chrestomathy, by H. L. Mencken
- A Monetary History of the United States, by Milton Friedman
- The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
- Robert’s Rules of Order, by Henry Robert
- The Pump House Gang, by Tom Wolfe
- The Last Empire: Essays 1992–2000, by Gore Vidal
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
- Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, by Barrington Moore
Dystopian
“What’s it going to be then, eh?”
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
- A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
- Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
- Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
- Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
- Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
- 1984, by George Orwell
- Contact, by Carl Sagan
- Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
Philosophical
“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
- The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri
- The Art of Living, by Epictetus
- Candide, by Voltaire
- Ethics, by Spinoza
- The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels
- Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse
- The Portable Nietzsche, by Friedrich Nietzsche
- The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, by William E. Cain, et al.
- Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, by Barrington Moore (political philosophy)
- Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
- The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
- 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
- Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
- Lisa and David, by Dr. Theodore Isaac Rubin, M.D.
- Ironweed, by William J. Kennedy
- The Manticore, by Robertson Davies
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
- Sybil, by Flora Rheta Schreiber
- 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
- Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom
- He’s Just Not That Into You, by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
- Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, by John Gray
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo
- What Color is Your Parachute?, by Richard Nelson Bolles
- Who Moved My Cheese?, by Spencer Johnson
- Revolution from Within, by Gloria Steinem
Guides and Personal Development
- The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom
- Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
- The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby
- Europe through the Back Door, by Rick Steves
- Yoga for Dummies, by Georg Feuerstein and Larry Payne
Outro + Final Thoughts
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Hi, I’m Sabrina
It’s so nice to finally meet you! I’m so happy you found your way here. To get to know me and this blog even better, click here! <3
FOLLOW
Related Posts
