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