Reading Like Rory Gilmore

I’ll admit it, I watch the Gilmore Girls all the time. I get made fun of mercilessly for watching it, but I think its a fun show. I like the fact that Rory is a bookaholic, and somewhat like me when I was in high school. I also like that this show leans on the intellectual side by throwing out references to literary works as well as classic and contemporary pop culture fads. Everytime I watch an episode, even if its for the 12th time, I learn or pick up on something new from the show. Its the type of show that ages well. The ensemble cast means that there are plenty of personalities to latch onto over a lengthy span of time (in my case 10 years).

This list is for Rory’s book list, movie and music list mentioned on the show. Her list includes the official list from the WB website, as well as her own contributions of titles mentioned on the show that were not on the WB list. Quite a few titles on this list I believe are referenced in their movie/TV show form on the show, but since they originated from a book, I figure its safe to put on the list.

Other Rory Resources

The Gilmore Girls Wiki with detailed episode by episode list of the books, movies and music mentioned in the show, as well as cast and show trivia, bios & more.
You can find a similar list of the books of the Gilmore Girls via the Black, White & Read Bookstore Blog.
The GoodReads Rory Gilmore Book Club for all your GG needs. The group reads two books from Rory’s list each month.

The titles with check marks are the books that I have read. You can click on the hyperlinks to read my reviews. I will keep adding titles as I find out about them. If you know of any, let me know! I’ll also try to add the season and episode that the reference took place, to add some validity to the list. =p

The List

√ 1984 – George Orwell
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
√ Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon
An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser
Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt
√ Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
√ Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank
Archidamian War – Donald Kagen
The Art of Fiction – Henry James
The Art of War – Sun Tzu
As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
√ Atonement – Ian McEwan
√ The Awakening – Kate Chopin
√ Autobiography of a Face – Lucy Grealy
√ Babe – Dick King-Smith
Backlash – Susan Faludi
√ Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress – Dai Sijie
√ The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Beowulf – Seamus Heaney
The Bhagava Gita
The Bielski Brothers – Peter Duffy
Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women – Elizabeth Wurtzel
A Bolt From the Blue & other Essays – Mary McCarthy
√ Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
√ Brick Lane – Monica Ali
Brigadoon – Alan Jay Lerner
√ Candide – Voltaire
The Canterbury Tales – Chaucer
√ Carrie –Stephen King
Catch – 22 – Joseph Heller
√ The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
The Celebrated Jumping Frog – Mark Twain
√ Charlotte’s Web – EB White
The Children’s Hour – Lilian Hellman
√ Christine – Stephen King
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
√ A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
The Code of the Woosters – PG Wodehouse
The Collected Short Stories – Eudora Welty
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
A Comedy of Errors – William Shakespeare
Complete Novels – Dawn Powell
The Complete Poems – Anne Sexton
Complete Stories – Dorothy Parker
√ A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
Cousin Bette – Honore de Balzac
Crime & Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Crimson Petal & the White – Michael Faber
√ The Crucible – Arthur Miller
Cujo – Stephen King
√ The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime – Mark Haddon
Daughter of Fortune – Isabel Allende
David and Lisa – Dr. Theodore Issac Rubin
David Coperfield – Charles Dickens
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
Deal Souls – Nikolai Gogol (Season 3, episode 3)
Demons – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
√ Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller
Deenie – Judy Blume
The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
The Dirt – Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mark, & Nikki Sixx
The Divine Comedy – Dante
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood – Rebecca Wells
Don Quijote – Cervantes
Driving Miss Daisy – Alfred Uhrv
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
Complete Tales & Poems – Edgar Allan Poe
Eleanor Roosevelt – Blanche Wiesen Cook
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
√ Ella Minnow Pea – Mark Dunn
Eloise – Kay Thompson
√ Emily the Strange – Roger Reger
√ Emma – Jane Austen
Empire Falls – Richard Russo
√ Encyclopedia Brown – Donald J. Sobol
√ Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Ethics – Spinoza
Eva Luna – Isabel Allende
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathon Safran Foer
Extravagance – Gary Kist
√ Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 911 – Michael Moore
The Fall of the Athenian Empire – Donald Kagan
√ Fat Land:How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World – Greg Critser
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
√ The Fellowship of the Ring – J R R Tolkien
Fiddler on the Roof – Joseph Stein
The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom
Finnegan’s Wake – James Joyce
Fletch – Gregory McDonald
Flowers of Algernon – Daniel Keyes
The Fortress of Solitude – Jonathon Lethem
The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
√ Franny and Zooey – JD Salinger
Freaky Friday – Mary Rodgers
Galapagos – Kurt Vonnegut
Gender Trouble – Judith Baker
George W. Bushism – Jacob Weisberg
Gidget – Fredrick Kohner
√ Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen
The Ghostic Gospels – Elaine Pagels
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
Goldilocks & the Three Bears – Alvin Granowsky
Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Good Soldier – Ford Maddox Ford
The Gospel According to Judy Bloom
The Graduate – Charles Webb
√ The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
√ The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
√ Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
The Group – Mary McCarthy
√ Hamlet – Shakespeare
√ Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – JK Rowling
√ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – JK Rowling
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers
√ Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
√ Helter Skelter – Vincent Bugliosi
Henry IV, Part 1 – Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 2 – Shakespeare
Henry V – Shakespeare
High Fidelity – Nick Hornby
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – Edward Gibbons
√ Holidays on Ice – David Sedaris
The Holy Barbarians – Lawrence Lipton
House of Sand and Fog – Andre Dubus III
√ The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
How to Breathe Underwater – Julie Orringer
√ How the Grinch Stole Christmas – Dr. Seuss
How the Light Gets In – MJ Hyland
Howl – Alan Ginsburg
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
The Illiad – Homer
I’m With the Band – Pamela des Barres
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
Inferno – Dante
Inherit the Wind – Jerome Lawrence & Robert E Lee
Iron Weed – William J. Kennedy
It Takes a Village – Hilary Clinton
√ Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
√ The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan
Julius Caesar – Shakespeare
√ The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
Just a Couple of Days – Tony Vigorito
The Kitchen Boy – Robert Alexander
Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
√ Lady Chatterley’s Lover – DH Lawrence
The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 – Gore Vidal
Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
The Legend of Bagger Vance – Steven Pressfield
Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
Letters to a Young Poet – Rainer Maria Rilke
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them – Al Franken
√ Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Little Dorrit – Charles Dickens
The Little Locksmith – Katharine Butler Hathaway
The Little Match Girl – Hans Christian Anderson
√ Little Woman – Louisa May Alcott
Living History – Hillary Clinton
√ Lord of the Flies – William Golding
The Lottery & Other Stories – Shirley Jackson
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
The Love Story – Eric Segal
√ Macbeth – Shakespeare
√ Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
The Manticore – Robertson Davies (Season 3, episode 3)
Marathon Man – William Goldman
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
Memoirs of Dutiful Daughter – Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of General WT Sherman – William Tecumseh Sherman
Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
The Meaning of Consuelo – Judith Ortiz Cofer
Mencken’s Chrestomathy – HR Mencken
The Merry Wives of Windsor – Shakespeare
√ The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
The Miracle Worker – William Gibson
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
The Mojo Collection – Jim Irvin
Moliere – Hobart Chatfield Taylor
A Monetary History of the US – Milton Friedman
Monsieur Proust – Celeste Albaret
A Month of Sundays – Julie Mars
A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
Mutiny on the Bounty – Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall
My Lai 4 – Seymour M Hersh
My Life as Author and Editor – HR Mencken
My Life in Orange – Tim Guest
My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
√ The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
The Nanny Diaries – Emma McLaughlin
Nervous System – Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickinson
The New Way Things Work – David Macaulay
Nickel and Dimed – Barbara Ehrenreich
√ Night – Elie Wiesel
√ Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism – William E Cain
Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
Notes of a Dirty Old Man – Charles Bukowski
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
√ Old School – Tobias Wolff
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
√ On the Road – Jack Keruac
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
√ One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life – Amy Tan
Oracle Night – Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood
√ Othello – Shakespeare
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War – Donald Kagan
Out of Africa – Isac Dineson
√ The Outsiders – S. E. Hinton
A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition – Donald Kagan
The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
Peyton Place – Grace Metalious
√ The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Pigs at the Trough – Arianna Huffington
Pinocchio – Carlo Collodi
√ Please Kill Me – Legs McNeil & Gilliam McCain
The Polysyllabic Spree – Nick Hornby
The Portable Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzche
The Price of Loyalty – Ron Suskind
√ Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Property – Valerie Martin
Pushkin – TJ Binyon
√ Pygmalion – George Bernard Shaw
Quattrocento – James McKean
A Quiet Storm – Rachel Howzell Hall
Rapunzel – Grimm Brothers
The Razor’s Edge – W Somerset Maugham
Reading Lolita in Tehran – Azar Nafisi
√ Rebecca – Daphne de Maurier
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Red Tent – Anita Diamant
Rescuing Patty Hearst – Virginia Holman
√ The Return of the King – JRR Tolkien
R is for Ricochet – Sue Grafton
Rita Hayworth – Stephen King
Robert’s Rules of Order – Henry Robert
Roman Fever – Edith Wharton
√ Romeo and Juliet – Shakespeare
A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf
A Room with a View – EM Forster
√ Rosemary’s Baby – Ira Levin
The Rough Guide to Europe
Sacred Time – Ursula Hegi
Sanctuary – William Faulkner
Savage Beauty – Nancy Milford
√ Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller – Henry James
The Scarecrow of Oz – Frank L. Baum
The Scarlet Letter – Nathanial Hawthorne
Seabiscuit – Laura Hillenbrand
The Second Sex – Simone de Beauvior
√ The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
Secrets of the Flesh – Judith Thurman
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell (1913-1965)
√ Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
A Separate Place – John Knowles
Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
Sexus – Henry Miller
√ The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafron
Shane – Jack Shaefer
√ The Shining – Stephen King
Siddartha – Hermann Hesse
S is for Silence – Sue Grafton
√ Slaughter-House 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island – Andrea Levy
Snows of Kilamanjaro – Ernest Hemingway
Snow White and Red Rose – Grimm Brothers
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy – Barrington Moore
The Song of Names – Norman Lebrecht
Song of the Simple Truth – Julia de Burgos
The Song Reader – Lisa Tucker
Songbook – Nick Hornby
The Sonnets – Shakespeare
Sonnets from the Portuegese – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sophie’s Choice – William Styron
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
Speak, Memory – Vladimir Nabakov
Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers – Mary Roach
√ The Story of my Life – Helen Keller
√ A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams
√ Stuart Little – EB White
√ Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Swann’s Way – Marcel Proust
Swimming with Giants – Anne Collett
Sybil – Flora Rheta Schreiber
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Tender is the Night – F Scott Fitzgerald
Term of Endearment – Larry McMurty
√ Time and Again – Jack Finney
√ The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffeneggar
To Have and to Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
√ To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Tragedy of Richard III – Shakespeare
Travel and Motoring through Europe – Myra Waldo
√ A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
√ The Trial – Franz Kafka
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters – Elisabeth Robinson
Truth & Beauty – Ann Patchett
√ Tuesdays with Morrie – Mitch Albom
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (1950-1962)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
Unless – Carol Shields
√ Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann
The Vanishing Newspaper – Philip Meyers
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Velvet Underground – Joe Harvard
√ The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Walt Disney’s Bambi – Felix Salten
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
We Owe You Nothing – Daniel Sinker
What Colour is Your Parachute – Richard Nelson Bolles
What Happened to Baby Jane – Henry Farrell
When the Emperor Was Divine – Julie Otsuka
Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee
√ Wicked – Gregory Maguire
√ The Wizard of Oz – Frank L Baum
√ Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
The Yearling – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion

50 responses to “Reading Like Rory Gilmore”

readerville | July 18, 2008 at 9:46 am | Reply

That’s quite an endeavor! When the boxed set for the entire series came out several months ago, it included a glossary of Gilmore terms & literary references…if you’re that big of a fan, you might check it out, though I wouldn’t be surprised if there are websites for this as well.

p.s. Thanks for adding me to your blog roll! I like your site as well.
- justanotherteenagegirlsthoughts | August 21, 2012 at 5:19 pm |
  
  Just FYI, (and I’ve seen this on a lot of people’s blogs) But The Fountainhead is by Ernest Hemingway; not Ayn Rand… Well, it might be by them too, but not the version Jess and Rory talk about… So, yeah. (:
- Narineh | August 21, 2012 at 5:26 pm |
  
  I think they may have been referring to another book by Hemingway. I don’t see anything that lists a book titled The Fountainhead being written by him.
- Tiffany | June 13, 2015 at 12:26 pm |
  
  The Fountainhead is definitely written by Ayn Rand. It’s one of her most notable works.
unfinishedperson | July 18, 2008 at 7:10 pm | Reply

I have a friend who loves The Gilmore Girls. I’ll have to pass this on to her, if she isn’t already aware of it. Whether or not it is accurate, it’s still a great list with which to start.
C.C. aka LorelaiCC | July 19, 2008 at 8:27 am | Reply

thanks for passing it on to me unfinishedperson – definitely something I’ll look into going through
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Ju Haghverdian | August 26, 2008 at 4:48 pm | Reply

woow, I have read some of the list too and some are on my must-read list… very good! I’m not a fan of the program either but it is good to know they showed cultural things too beyond the mother breaking up and coming back with her boyfriends and so on hehehe. I had noticed that in American movies they always show people reading or in libraries what is really hard to find in Brazilian’s movies or soap-operas.
=D
melissa | December 21, 2008 at 7:49 pm | Reply

It’s too bad you find the mother/daughter dynamic to be corny. If you really examine it, it’s a tightly knit relationship that resulted from Loreali being a single mother as well as a third movement feminist. Please, be careful to mock and do your research.
rantsandreads | December 21, 2008 at 9:22 pm | Reply

Melissa,

I wasn’t mocking the dynamic. I do understand the relevance of the mother-daughter relationship. I just find the writing and a lot of the jokes to be really corny. I think its awesome for any mother-daughter to be that close.
Joanna | December 23, 2008 at 7:14 am | Reply

I love this list too – and The Gilmore Girls in general, I think the writing is fantastic and very intelligent. 🙂
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Kvåle | October 30, 2009 at 10:03 am | Reply

my mother is a single mom who got me at an early age, and we are very much alike the gilmore girls weve been told. when it comes to the jokes, yes they are kind of corny, but so are people too! and they are made to be corny; oy with the poodles already, is a fine example!

love the book list though! 😉
Jess | November 20, 2009 at 2:44 pm | Reply

This is such an amazing list! I just finished uni for the year, so I have been wanting to compile a list of summer reading. Looks like I have found it!
Ju Haghverdian | February 19, 2010 at 8:29 pm | Reply

Hi Nariii, I have been contemplating to add this list on my blog for a while… can I copy from yours?
ctrl c + ctrl v
I have read some of the list, not as many as you, but it is an inspiration isn’t it?
xoxo
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Caroline | October 19, 2011 at 10:37 am | Reply

I love the Gilmore Girls and owe the entire series! Wow, I can’t believe you’ve analyzed all the books mentioned in the show. I’ve seen the Rory Gilmore Book Challenge on other blogs, but never seen the books. Thanks for the info
linta effandi | March 26, 2012 at 10:28 am | Reply

This list is amazing but as far as i can tell you missed out atlas shrugged and fountain head by Ann rand!
alenamurguia | April 2, 2012 at 5:21 pm | Reply

I miss my daily dose of Gilmore Girls. It used to be my regular go-to working late afternoons in the kitchen. I am somewhat surprised at the depth of this list, but several titles brought back memories of various episodes, so thanks for that. No I’ll find myself asking, “Would Rory have read this?”
Bear Allen | April 11, 2012 at 4:12 pm | Reply

I’m currently reading all books mentioned on Gilmore girls. The below list seems to be the best one I was able to find so far. I love that so many fans have come together to try to compile this list! Good luck and happy reading!

http://blackwhitereadbookchallenge.blogspot.com/2011/09/official-list.html
jcmarketing343 | November 8, 2012 at 9:27 pm | Reply

Just checking off everything I’ve read so far….wow I’ve put a decent dent in it.
traumgirl♥ | January 20, 2013 at 7:52 am | Reply

Which was the book jess stole rory in season 2? 🙂
And thanks a lot for uploading all this books i’m already starting to read some of them.
- vivien | August 31, 2013 at 6:40 pm |
  
  it was HOWL by Allen Ginsberg
Louise | August 1, 2013 at 6:27 am | Reply

I loved The Gilmore Girls, but haven’t seen any in ages. I have the first few series on DVD, I should get them out again. I need to copy the reading list too, am a great fan of lists. I have seen this one before, but not made any serious effort to read through it, of course I have read some, it would be fun to count them up.
Natasha | September 22, 2014 at 4:04 am | Reply

This list is great! I absolutely loved the show and have always been envious of Rory’s reading list.
Sara | February 13, 2015 at 4:28 am | Reply

I thought she didn’t read “Who moved my cheese?” In the episode “Road Trip to Harvard” during that scene where Rory and Lorelai are looking at the Harvard library, Lorelai comments “You don’t have to read … Just stuff you already know.”
- Narineh | February 13, 2015 at 10:46 am |
  
  You are right, she didn’t read it. A good chunk of these books are titles mentioned on the show or read by other characters.
Sara | February 13, 2015 at 11:02 am | Reply

True. I’m sure there’s no way to know how many she read. 😉
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Jenny | August 10, 2015 at 6:53 pm | Reply

#271 should be A Separate PEACE, not A Separate Place 🙂 Loved that book!
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kate | November 26, 2016 at 9:21 am | Reply

about 40% of these books I have read either through high school or college I’m going to start with the ones I haven’t read tossing up the idea weather or not to reread the books I’m already familiar with what an amazing list though I’m reading Edgar Allen pose poems an anna K book
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Angela ford | August 16, 2019 at 7:08 pm | Reply

I have some of the books from the list on my bookshelf I love reading.