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‘Gilmore Girls’ Rory Gilmore Lifetime Reading Challenge

I am all about reading more books this year. I used to be an avid reader. It was my hobby, my passion and my life. Over the last few years, starting with grad school, my reading for pleasure has diminished a bit. Now that I am on a positive journey to practice self care and get back to the things I love so much, I am  looking for book challenges to keep me on my toes.

I love Gilmore Girls and have binge-watched the season on Netflix more times than I should admit. I am big on the small town charm, but I loved that they created this character that reminded me so much of Belle from Beauty and the the Beast. 

As I watched the show I tried to keep up with the extensive list of book Rory Gilmore read. At one point I had a book journal with the ones I remember to write down in there. Now, I have no idea where that book journal went. But that is okay because I plan to create another one this year with more of an artistic flair.

Thanks to the power of the Internet, a quick scan through Pinterest and you will find a zillion and one posts about the Rory Gilmore Book Challenge. I am not putting a time limit on this list. Some of them I have already read. Others will make it to my to-read list rather quickly. The rest of them I might have to kick myself to get motivated. What I like about this list is that I can kill two birds with one stone as some of these books will also help me check off my 2016 Reading Challenge.

There are 340 books in this challenge. You can set it up however you want. I haven’t really seen a challenge with a definite set of rules, so as far as I am concerned, there are none.

First: Bookmark this post. I’ll be coming back here to update my list.

Second: Join the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge GoodReads group.

Third: Follow me on GoodReads so you can keep up with my progress as well as share a lot of other fun book stuff with me.

Fourth: Copy paste the list below into your own blog (if you want) and share your progress with your readers.

Fifth: Check out this pin, which will lead you to Callaloo Soup and her wonderful printable list that is the perfect size to put in a planner! You can even put the pages in your own book journal.

That’s it!

I’ve colored the ones in purple that I have already read. I’ll come back and cross them off as I go.

  1. 1984 by George Orwell
  2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  3. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 
  4. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
  5. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
  6. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
  7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  8. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
  9. Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
  10. The Art of Fiction by Henry James
  11. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
  12. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  13. Atonement by Ian McEwan
  14. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
  15. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
  16. Babe by Dick King-Smith
  17. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
  18. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
  19. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
  20. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 
  21. Beloved by Toni Morrison
  22. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
  23. The Bhagava Gita
  24. The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built
  25. a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
  26. Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
  27. A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
  28. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  29. Brick Lane by Monica Ali
  30. Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
  31. Candide by Voltaire 
  32. The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
  33. Carrie by Stephen King
  34. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  35. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger 
  36. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
  37. The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
  38. Christine by Stephen King
  39. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 
  40. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  41. The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
  42. The Collected Short Stories by Eudora Welty
  43. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
  44. A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
  45. Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
  46. The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
  47. Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
  48. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
  49. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père
  50. Cousin Bette by Honor’e de Balzac
  51. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  52. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
  53. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
  54. Cujo by Stephen King
  55. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon 
  56. Daisy Miller by Henry James
  57. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
  58. David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
  59. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
  60. The Da Vinci -Code by Dan Brown 
  61. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
  62. Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  63. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
  64. Deenie by Judy Blume
  65. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that
  66. Changed America by Erik Larson
  67. The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
  68. The Divine Comedy by Dante
  69. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
  70. Don Quijote by Cervantes
  71. Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
  72. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
  73. Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
  74. Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
  75. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
  76. Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
  77. Eloise by Kay Thompson
  78. Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
  79. Emma by Jane Austen 
  80. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
  81. Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
  82. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
  83. Ethics by Spinoza
  84. Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves
  85. Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
  86. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
  87. Extravagance by Gary Krist
  88. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 
  89. Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
  90. The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
  91. Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
  92. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
  93. The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
  94. Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
  95. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom 
  96. Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
  97. Fletch by Gregory McDonald
  98. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  99. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
  100. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
  101. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  102. Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
  103. Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
  104. Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
  105. Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
  106. George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
  107. Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
  108. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
  109. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
  110. The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo
  111. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
  112. Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
  113. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 
  114. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
  115. The Gospel According to Judy Bloom
  116. The Graduate by Charles Webb
  117. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  118. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  119. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  120. The Group by Mary McCarthy
  121. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
  122. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
  123. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling 
  124. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
  125. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 
  126. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry 
  127. Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare
  128. Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
  129. Henry V by William Shakespeare
  130. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
  131. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
  132. Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
  133. The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
  134. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
  135. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
  136. How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
  137. How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
  138. How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
  139. Howl by Allen Gingsburg
  140. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
  141. The Iliad by Homer
  142. I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
  143. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  144. Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
  145. Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy
  146. It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
  147. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 
  148. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
  149. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
  150. The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
  151. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
  152. Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
  153. The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
  154. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  155. Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence
  156. The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
  157. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
  158. The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
  159. Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
  160. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
  161. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
  162. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  163. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
  164. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
  165. The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
  166. The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
  167. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 
  168. Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
  169. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  170. The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
  171. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold 
  172. The Love Story by Erich Segal
  173. Macbeth by William Shakespeare 
  174. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
  175. The Manticore by Robertson Davies
  176. Marathon Man by William Goldman
  177. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  178. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
  179. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
  180. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
  181. The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
  182. Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken
  183. The Merry Wives of Windsro by William Shakespeare
  184. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
  185. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
  186. The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
  187. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
  188. The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
  189. Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
  190. A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
  191. Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
  192. A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
  193. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
  194. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
  195. Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
  196. My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
  197. My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken
  198. My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
  199. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult 
  200. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
  201. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
  202. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
  203. The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
  204. Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
  205. New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
  206. The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
  207. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
  208. Night by Elie Wiesel
  209. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen 
  210. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
  211. Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
  212. Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
  213. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  214. Old School by Tobias Wolff
  215. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
  216. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  217. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
  218. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
  219. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  220. The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
  221. Oracle Night by Paul Auster
  222. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
  223. Othello by Shakespeare 
  224. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  225. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
  226. Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
  227. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
  228. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
  229. The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
  230. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
  231. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
  232. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  233. Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
  234. Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
  235. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
  236. The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby 
  237. The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
  238. The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
  239. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
  240. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 
  241. Property by Valerie Martin
  242. Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
  243. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
  244. Quattrocento by James Mckean
  245. A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
  246. Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers 
  247. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
  248. The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
  249. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
  250. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 
  251. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
  252. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
  253. Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
  254. The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings Book 3 by J. R. R. Tolkien
  255. R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
  256. Rita Hayworth by Stephen King
  257. Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
  258. Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
  259. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
  260. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
  261. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
  262. Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
  263. Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
  264. Sanctuary by William Faulkner
  265. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
  266. The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
  267. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  268. Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
  269. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
  270. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd 
  271. Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
  272. Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
  273. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen 
  274. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
  275. Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
  276. Sexus by Henry Miller
  277. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  278. Shane by Jack Shaefer
  279. The Shining by Stephen King
  280. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
  281. S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton
  282. Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  283. Small Island by Andrea Levy 
  284. Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
  285. Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers 
  286. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
  287. The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
  288. Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
  289. The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
  290. Songbook by Nick Hornby
  291. The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
  292. Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  293. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
  294. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  295. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
  296. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
  297. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
  298. A Streetcar Named Desiree by Tennessee Williams
  299. Stuart Little by E. B. White
  300. Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  301. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
  302. Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
  303. Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
  304. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  305. Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  306. Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
  307. Time and Again by Jack Finney
  308. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 
  309. To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
  310. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 
  311. The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare
  312. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
  313. The Trial by Franz Kafka
  314. The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
  315. Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
  316. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom 
  317. Ulysses by James Joyce
  318. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath
  319. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe 
  320. Unless by Carol Shields
  321. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
  322. The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
  323. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
  324. Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
  325. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
  326. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
  327. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  328. Walt Disney’s Bambi by Felix Salten
  329. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  330. We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
  331. What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
  332. What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
  333. When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
  334. Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
  335. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee 
  336. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
  337. The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum
  338. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
  339. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
  340. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

 

Have you read any of these? Are you ready to take on this challenge?

If you are a ‘Gilmore Girls’ fan or if you just like the graphic above and want to download to print your own copy, you can find here in our new Etsy Nevermore Lane Print shop.

Ready to get started?

On February 1, The GoodReads Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge is kicking off with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (which is #123 on the list.) I have already read it, which was about a month after the first book came out. I feel all first edition special and stuff. 😉 I haven’t read it since then, so it will be fun to do a reread.  Pretty sure I will be using this book to cross one off the 2016 Reading Challenge as well. 😉

 

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24 Comments

  1. It’s awesome how much you like to read! My husband is like that – always with his nose in a book.

  2. I love the idea of this reading challenge! I’m an avid book reader and always have been, but lately (the last year or so), I’ve let it fall to the wayside, and I miss it. This is a great way to get back into the swing…and there are some absolute favorite titles on this list!

  3. I’m so glad that most if not all of these book titles in the list are accessible online for free reading. I haven’t had the chance to read books for a while now because of work. In the list, my favorite so far has to be The Art of War. 🙂

  4. I don’t think I have read any of these but really enjoy reading as well. I will have to read some of these.

  5. I’ve read quite a few of those books and would like to add more to my list. I love to read more than anyone I know. I get it from my mom I guess because she loves to read almost as much as I do.

  6. Man, it would take me years to get through this challenge. I do love to read, but I am lucky if I can squeeze in 40 books a year. Good luck with your challenge!

    1. That is awesome! I haven’t really decided how to tackle the list this year. I joined a Good Reads group so I will probably follow along with them.

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