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Rory Gilmore's Complete Reading List.

Looking for a book recommendation from the queen of reading herself? We've done our research and compiled every. single. book. that Rory has referenced, read, and hoped to read.


Buckle up, this list is massive, it's a whopping 400+ book list - and to make it easier to navigate, we've placed the more popular ones in bold. Happy reading!


To read:

1984 by George Orwell

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

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 & 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 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 by Anonymous

The Bhagavad Gita by Anonymous

The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1200 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

Compact Oxford English Dictionary

Complete Novels by Dawn Powell

The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton

Complete Stories by 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

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 Roger 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! (Another Point of View) by Alvin Granowsky

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Goodnight Spoon by Keith Richards

The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox 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 J. Kennedy

It Takes a Village by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

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 Chatterleys’ 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, Ph.D.

Mencken’s 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 Celeste 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 by William E. Cain, 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 Sophicles

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 by Various Authors

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

Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller by Henry James

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 Zafon

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 Collett

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

The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare

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 Meyers

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 Farrell

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 Frank L. Baum

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Yoga for Dummies by Georg Feuerstein and Larry Payne

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