rory gilmore's reading list

postcard 64: fall is here, so here the infamous reading list—annotated and organized by me

In the twenty five years since Gilmore Girls first aired, the show has managed to mass a cult following and a large population that rewatches the show (or the first three seasons at least) every single fall. There is an enduring appeal and charm to this show, most of which comes from the seasonal quality of it. Set in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, the show is a concoction of everything that feels autumnal and nostalgic, from Rory’s dedication to academia, to the pre-polysterification sweater weather, to the small town coziness of it all.

Gilmore Girls is still extremely prevalent in current day pop culture, as new generations of teenagers every year refuse to let the show fade into oblivion. I first watched it when I was fifteen with my high school roommate and remember us both being absolutely in love with Jess (perhaps as we all are as fifteen year olds). My opinions, especially on Rory’s three love interests, have grown and evolved in the last ten years, especially as I’ve watched bits of the show over my little sister’s shoulder every fall, but one thing that has not changed is the fondness I have for Rory’s unapologetic love of reading.

It’s September, which is fall, so here is every book Rory is seen reading throughout the show. I organized the list in sub genres and alphabetically, as it is a massive list. I have also highlighted my favorites and put a star after the title! This took me way longer than I expected and has pretty much been a monthlong project, but I’m excited that I finally have this to refer to (this list was honestly for me as much as it was for you).

I don’t like a lot of the books on here and think that you should not read them (The Fountainhead, Churchill’s biography etc), but I just included and categorized everything. Please keep in mind that some of these are extremely outdated in terms of political correctness (and correctness in general).

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side note: if you enjoy reading and things that intellectually stimulate you, check out my how to get smart again series, in which I try to tackle post grad brain rot and my diminishing attention span from short form media. here is the lineup! the first four parts have already been posted, which you can find in the link above.

I’m also doing weekly syllabus posts of books, lectures, essays, podcasts, movies, and video essays I want to visit for the week, so check that out here!

how to get smart again: weekly syllabus [september week 1]

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pre 19th century classics

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

Don Quixote by Cervantes

Beowulf

The Bhagavad Gita

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19th century classics

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Emma by Jane Austen ★

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen ★

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen ★

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë ★

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë ★

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll ★

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky ★

Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens ★

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Cinderella by The Brothers Grimm

Snow White and Rose Red by Brothers Grimm

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol ★

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

Daisy Miller by Henry James

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Cyrano De Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley ★

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy ★

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy ★

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The Celebrated Jumping Frog by Mark Twain

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde ★

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20th century classics

Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov ★

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

Summer of Fear by Lois Duncan

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco ★

Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides ★

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner ★

Sanctuary by William Faulkner

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald ★

Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Marathon Man by William Goldman

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Mistress of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson ★

Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The Trial by Franz Kafka ★

Ironweed by William Kennedy

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Visions of Cody by Jack Kerouac

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Carrie by Stephen King

Christine by Stephen King

The Shining by Stephen King

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera ★

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham ★

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier ★

Beloved by Toni Morrison ★

The Group by Mary McCarthy

Fletch by Gregory McDonald

Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller ★

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath ★

Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

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

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger ★

Shane by Jack Shaefer

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith ★

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ★

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Sophie's Choice by William Styron

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan ★

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut ★

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams ★

The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton ★

Roman Fever by Edith Wharton

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf ★

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contemporary fiction (21st century)

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon ★

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini ★

How the Light Gets In by M. J. Hyland

Nervous System by Jan Lars Jensen

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

Small Island by Andrea Levy

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Atonement by Ian McEwan ★

The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin

How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett ★

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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memoir

Monsieur Proust by Céleste Albaret

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom ★

Memoirs of A Dutiful Daughter by Simone De Beauvoir

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion ★

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories from a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

A Month of Sundays: Searching for the Spirit and My Sister by Julie Mars

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

My Life as Author and Editor by H.L. Mencken

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov ★

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath ★

Memoirs of General William T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

The Opposite of Fate: Memories of A Writing Life by Amy Tan

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

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philosophy

The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir ★

The Art of Living by Epictetus

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

The Bhagavad Gita

Candide by Voltaire

Ethics by Spinoza

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

The Portable Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche

Walden by Henry David Thoreau ★

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

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essays

The War Against Cliche by Martin Amis

Notes of A Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler ★

The White Album by Joan Didion ★

I Feel Bad about My Neck by Nora Ephron

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

The Art of Fiction by Henry James

A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy

Sexus by Henry Miller

The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach ★

Lisa and David by Theodore Isaac Rubin

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind

The Last Empire: Essays 1992–2000 by Gore Vidal

Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays by David Foster Wallace

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

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history & historical true crime

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry ★

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote ★

The Bielski Brothers by Peter Duffy

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh

The Archidamian War by Donald Kagan

The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer

All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein ★

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biography

Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook

Pushkin: A Biography by T.J. Binyon

The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars, and Nikki Sixx

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

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman

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plays

The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer ★

The Mourning Bride by William Congreve

The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman

The Iliad by Homer

Hamlet by William Shakespeare ★

Macbeth by William Shakespeare ★

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare

The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare

Henry IV, Part I by William Shakespeare

Henry IV, Part II by William Shakespeare

Henry V by William Shakespeare

Henry VI by William Shakespeare

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare ★

Richard III by William Shakespeare ★

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams ★

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poetry & letters

Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning ★

Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia De Burgos by Julia De Burgos

New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson ★

Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913–1965 by Dawn Powell

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke ★

The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton ★

The Sonnets by William Shakespeare ★

Letters of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman