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The Rory Gilmore Reading List: How Novel

Over 400 HUNDRED books, so you can read like Rory Gilmore (or other Gilmore Girls characters). Find your Rory Gilmore reading list here.

Cassie Gutman Apr 4, 2023

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Cassie Gutman

Staff Writer

Cassie Gutman is happiest when surrounded by books and dogs. Originally from a small, funny-named town near Louisville, Kentucky, she now edits words for a living near Chicago and would like to be paid in ice cream. You can find her on Instagram @happybooklovers or on Twitter @cassiepgutman.

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Rory Gilmore is one of modern pop culture’s OG readers. She made lots of us readers feel like we weren’t alone in our bookish quirks. But it wasn’t just Rory who was big on reading. In fact, the entire Gilmore Girls show constantly referenced books and authors, showcasing all the characters reading a wide range from Sylvia Plath to David Sedaris. There have been so many book references on the show that a Rory Gilmore reading list has been established, and readers are taking the pledge to complete every single book referenced or seen on the show.

It seems Patrick Lenton was the originator of the idea to read all 339 books mentioned in the Gilmore Girls show, but many other sites and readers have also shown they are up to the task as well. The original 339 books has since upgraded to 408 books with the added revival, A Year in the Life.

If you’re thinking of taking on the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge yourself, prepare for a lot of doorstopper classics like Swann’s Way and Les Miserables and a whole lot of Shakespeare. But there are some fun ones in between, including books by the classic queen of mystery, Agatha Christie, and more modern writers like Margaret Atwood and Cheryl Strayed. There’s even a Goodreads group to chat with fellow participants about your favorites. Whether it’s a solo challenge or you want to check off some books along with your book club, taking the Gilmore Girls reading challenge will certainly add a ton of books to your TBR!

Here are all 408 books, in alphabetical order (plus some poems, but everyone seems to include these in the list anyway), that are referenced or make appearances in Gilmore Girls or Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. This list does not include authors who were referenced who had no specific work mentioned.

1984 by George Orwell
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as a History by Norman Mailer
The Art of Fiction by Henry James
The Art of Living by Epictetus
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Babe by Dick King-Smith
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Bambi: A Life in the Woods by Felix Salten
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beowulf
The Bhagavad Gita
The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Brigadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
Candide by Voltaire
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Celebrated Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
Christine by Stephen King
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Cinderella by Brothers Grimm
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Collected Stories by Eudora Welty
A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary
The Complete Novels of Dawn Powell
The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton
The Complete Stories of Dorothy Parker
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays by David Foster Wallace
Contact by Carl Sagan
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Cousin Bette by Honore De Balzac
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Cujo by Stephen King
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Cyrano De Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
Daisy Miller by Henry James
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Deenie by Judy Blume
Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
The Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars, and Nikki Sixx
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
Eloise at the Plaza by Kay Thompson
Emily the Strange by Rob Reger
Emma by Jane Austen
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Ethics by Spinoza
Europe through the Back Door: The Travel Skills Handbook by Rick Steves
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer
Extravagance by Gary Krist
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Fodor’s Selected Hotels of Europe
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of Our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
A Girl from Yamhill by Beverly Cleary
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Bears Should Share! by Alvin Granowsky
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Goodnight Spoon by Keith Richards
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago
The Graduate by Charles Webb
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Haiku, Volume 2: Spring by R.H. Blyth
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs by Hunter S. Thompson
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
Henry IV, Part I by William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part II by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
Henry VI by William Shakespeare
He’s Just Not That into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
Horton Hears A Who! by Dr. Seuss
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
How the Light Gets In by M. J. Hyland
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
I Feel Bad about My Neck by Nora Ephron
The Iliad by Homer
I’m with the Band by Pamela Des Barres
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Indiana by George Sand
The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Ironweed by William Kennedy
It Takes A Village by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
The Last Empire: Essays 1992–2000 by Gore Vidal
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Volume I: Visions of Glory, 1874–1932 by William Manchester
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Volume II: Alone, 1932–1940 by William Manchester
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Volume III: Defender of the Realm, 1940–1965 by William Manchester
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Letters of Ayn Rand by Ayn Rand
Letters of Edith Wharton by R. W. B. Lewis
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Lisa and David by Dr. Theodore Isaac Rubin, M.D.
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Love Story by Erich Segal
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Manticore by Robertson Davies
Marathon Man by William Goldman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Memoirs of A Dutiful Daughter by Simone De Beauvoir
Memoirs of General William T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray
A Mencken Chrestomathy by H.L. Mencken
The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
Misery by Stephen King
Mistress of Mellyn by Victoria Holt
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Mojo Collection: The Greatest Albums of All Time by Jim Irvin
Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
Molloy by Samuel Beckett
A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
Monsieur Proust by Céleste Albaret
A Month of Sundays: Searching for the Spirit and My Sister by Julie Mars
Motley Crue by Seamus Craic
The Mourning Bride by William Congreve
A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
My Life as Author and Editor by H.L. Mencken
My Life in Orange: Growing up with the Guru by Tim Guest
Myra Waldo’s Travel and Motoring Guide to Europe by Myra Waldo
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Nancy Drew and the Witch Tree Symbol by Carolyn Keene
The Nanny Diaries by Emma Mclaughlin
Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Night by Elie Wiesel
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism edited by Jeffrey J. Williams, et al.
Notes of A Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
Novels, 1930–1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to Be Born by Dawn Powell
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Old School by Tobias Wolff
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of A Writing Life by Amy Tan
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Othello by William Shakespeare
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
Out of Africa by Isak Dineson
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzsche by Fredrich Nietzsche
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Primary Colors by Joe Klein
Property by Valerie Martin
The Pump House Gang by Tom Wolfe
The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate: Two Novels by Nancy Mitford
Pushkin: A Biography by T.J. Binyon
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Quattrocento by James McKean
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
Rapunzel by Brothers Grimm
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories from a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem by Gloria Steinem
Richard III by William Shakespeare
R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Rita Hayworth by Stephen King
Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
The Rough Guide to Europe
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913–1965 by Dawn Powell
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Sexus by Henry Miller
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Shane by Jack Shaefer
The Shining by Stephen King
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Snow White and Rose Red by Brothers Grimm
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Songbook by Nick Hornby
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia De Burgos by Julia De Burgos
“Sonnet 43” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Stuart Little by E.B. White
Summer of Fear by T. Jefferson Parker
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collet
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Tevya the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories by Sholem Aleichem
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? by Horace McCoy
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Time and Again by Jack Finney
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Unless by Carol Shields
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyer
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Velvet Underground’s the Velvet Underground and Nico (33 1/3 Book 11) by Joe Harvard
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Visions of Cody by Jack Kerouac
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews by Daniel Sinker
What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles
What Happened to Baby Jane? by Henry Farrel
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Yoga for Dummies by Georg Feuerstein and Larry Payne

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start with your Rory Gilmore reading list, check out Book Riot’s TBR and get tailored book recommendations personalized to your reading tastes!

Cassie Gutman

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