‘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. 😉