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Brianna Renee

The Ultimate TBR list: Inspired by Rory Gilmore

Something that is oh so beloved by many book lovers (including myself) is the show “Gilmore Girls.” As I said at the start of the week on my Instagram this phenomenon could be for a variety of reasons. The academic feel of the show, the bookish character of Rory Gilmore, the writing, or the overall vibe of the show. Whatever it is for you I know that if anything we could learn a thing or two from Rory Gilmore (however you may feel about her) about being a good reader. So, in my continual quest to read more I thought it would be fun to share a list of all the books Rory has read to create the ultimate Rory Gilmore inspired reading list! While I realize I am torturing myself as my own tbr list has gotten completely out of hand, I don’t care! We do a lot for the things we love! So below I have shared all of the books Rory read on the show. Be warned, it is incredibly long...

The Ultimate Rory Gilmore Reading List

1984 by George Orwell

Absolute Rage by Robert Tanenbaum

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

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

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

American Steel by Richard Preston

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

The Andy Warhol Diaries Edited by Pat Hackett

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

Angels in America by Tony Kushner

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Archidamian War by Donald Kagan

The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher

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

Bad Dirt by Annie Proulx

Basic Writings of Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beowulf by Anonymous

The Bhagavad Gita by Anonymous

The Big Love by Sarah Dunn

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Brigadoon by Alan Jay Lerner

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

The Brontes by Juliet Barker

Call of the Wild by Jack Longdon

Candide by Voltaire

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

Carrie by Stephen King

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger

Charlotte’s Web by E B White

The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman

Christine by Stephen King

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes

Cinderella by Brothers Grimm

Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

The Collected Stories by Eudora Welty

A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare

Complete Novels by Dawn Powell

The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton

Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

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 Crisis by David Harris

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Cujo by Stephen King

Cyrano De Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

David and Lisa by Dr. Theodore Issac Rubin, M.D.

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

Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Diary of Virginia Wolf, Volumes 1,3,4,5 Edited by Anne Olivier Bell

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

Don Quixote by Cervantes

Downpour by Nick Holmes

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook

Elements by Euclid

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

Eloise at the Plaza by Kay Thompson

Emily the Strange by Roger Reger

Emma by Jane Austen

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethics by Spinoza

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

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

Firewall by Lawrence Walsh

First Folio by William Shakespeare

Flavor of the Month by Olivia Goldsmith

Fletch by Gregory McDonald

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

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

Frida by Hayden Herrera

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler

Gidget by Fredrick Kohner

Gigi by Collette

A Girl from Yamhill by Beverly Cleary

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

Glengarry Glen Ross by David Marmet

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Goodnight Spoon by Keith Richards

The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford

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

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Guys and Dolls by Damon Runyon

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Harrold & the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

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

Hockey for Dummies by John Davidson and John Steinbreder

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 Light Gets In by M.J. Hyland

How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers

The Human Factor by Graham Greene

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

The Invitation by Oriah

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

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D.H. Lawrence

Larousse Wine by David Cobbold

The Last Word by Graham Greene

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

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

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

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

Little House on the Prairie 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

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

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

Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans

The Manticore by Robertson Davies

Marathon Man by William Goldman

Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers and Mary Shepard

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer

The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir

Memoirs of General William T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman

A Mencken 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

Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor

Molloy by Samuel Beckett

Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford

Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret

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 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

The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin

Native Son by Richard Wright

New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson

The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Night by Elie Wiesel

No Man is an Island by John Donne

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski

November of the Heart by LaVyrle Spenser

The Odyssey by Homer

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Old School by Tobias Wolff

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

On the Contrary by Mary McCarthy

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Oracle Night by Paul Auster

Orations by American Orators

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Othello by William Shakespeare

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Out of Africa by Isak Dineson

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

The Persian Puzzle by Kenneth M. Pollack

Personal History by Katherine Graham

Peyton Place by Grace Metalious

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

Plutarch’s Lives by Plutarch

Poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Points of View by W. Somerset Maugham

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker

The Portable Nietzsche by Fredrich Nietzsche

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Primary Colors by Joe Klein

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Property by Valerie Martin

The Pump House Gang by Tom Wolfe

Punk: The Definitive Record of a Revolution by Stephen Colegrave and Chris Sullivan

Pushkin: A Biography by T.J. Binyon

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

Quattrocento by James McKean

A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall

Quiller Bamboo by Adam Hall

Rapunzel by the Brothers Grimm

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

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

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

Richard III by William Shakespeare

R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton

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

The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell

Sexus by Henry Miller

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Shane by Jack Shaefer

Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Shining by Stephen King

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton

The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Sleeping Beauty by The Brothers Grimm

Small Island by Andrea Levy

Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

Snow White and Rose Red by the Brothers Grimm

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

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

Stalin: A Biography by Robert Service

The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

Story of O by Pauline Reage

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

Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry

Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Thunder by James Grady

Time and Again by Jack Finney

Timeline by Michael Crichton

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac

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 Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Ulysses by James Joyce

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky

Unless by Carol Shields

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

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

What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles

What Happened to Baby Jane? by Henry Farrell

When Everything Changed by Gail Collins

Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

The Wine Bible by Karen MacNeil

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

Yoga for Dummies by Georg Feuerstein and Larry Payne

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantakis

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Questions

How many of these have you read?

Were any books missed?

How long is your tbr list?

Share in the comments below!


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References

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