Good morning my loves!
Today’s post is a little different for me – I’ve never actually sought to participate in such a huge reading challenge, and while it’s a little daunting, I am very excited to get started!
You’ll probably have guessed from the title of the post that I am going to be attempting to read every book every mentioned in The Gilmore Girls TV series – both the original and the most recent series. It’s a total of over FOUR HUNDRED BOOKS. Yeesh. Now, as you’ll see, some of them are already crossed out, and that is because I have read them and read them recently enough to remember them properly. There are some on the list I have already read but it was such a long time ago that I remember next to nothing so I’m planning on re-reading.
This is a challenge that will take place over many years and my hope is to read 3ish from the list every month. My reasons for wanting to do this, aside from the fact that I loved watching The Gilmore Girls when I was growing up, is that it is such a varied list of books, that I hope will expand my reading horizons.
So, I will hopefully be posting monthly on my progress but this is the only time I will be sharing the complete list. And here it is!

1984by George Orwell
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
- Adventures of Tom Sawyer
by Mark Twain
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandby 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 Diary of a Young Girlby Anne Frank
- 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 Jarby Sylvia Plath
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Beowulf
- The Bhagava Gita
- 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 Worldby Aldous Huxley
- Brick Lane
by Monica Ali
- Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
- Candide by Voltaire
- The Canterbury Tales
by Chaucer
- 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
- Cinderella by Brothers Grimm
- Christine by Stephen King
- A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens
- A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess
- The Code of the Woosters
by PG 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 Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
- A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole
- 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 Codeby Dan Brown
- Dead Souls
by Nikolai Gogol
- Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Death of a Salesman
by Arthur Miller
- Deenie
by Judy Blume
- The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
by Erik Larson
- 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
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom- Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
- 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
Frankensteinby 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 a Beverly Cleary
- Girl, Interrupted
by Susanna Kaysen
- The Gnostic Gospels
by Elaine Pagels
- The Godfather: Book by Mario Puzo
- The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
- Goldilocks and the Three Bears
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
The Great Gatsbyby F Scott Fitzgerald
- Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
- The Group
by Mary McCarthy
- Haiku, Volume 2: Spring by R.H. Blyth
- Hamlet
by William Shakespeare
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fireby J K Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stoneby J K Rowling
- He’s Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
- 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 Bugliosiand 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
- 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
- House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
- The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
- Horton Hears a Who!
by Dr. Seuss
- How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas
by Dr Seuss
- How the Light Gets In by M J Hyland
- Howl and Other Poem by Allen Ginsberg
- 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 Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
- 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: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 by William Manchester
- The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940 by William Manchester
- The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: 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 edited by Michael S. Berliner
- 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 Wardrobeby CS Lewis
- Lisa and David by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin MD
- 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 Bonesby Alice Sebold
- The 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
- Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
- Memoirs of General William T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
- Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
- The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
- 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
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 Moveable 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 It’s 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 Keeperby 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, Laurie A Finke, Barbara E Johnson, John P McGowan
- Novels, 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
- Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
- Oedipus Rex by Sophicles
Of Mice and Menby John Steinbeck
- Old School by Tobias Wolff
- Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens
- On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
- 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
- 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 Shakespeare- Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
- The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
- Out of Africa by Isac 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 Grayby 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 Nietzche
by Fredrich Nietzche
- The Price of Loyalty: George W Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
Pride and Prejudiceby 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 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
- R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
- Rapunzel
by Grimm Brothers
- 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
- Rita Hayworth by Stephen King
- Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
- Roman Holiday 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 Sensibilityby 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 Grimm Brothers
- 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
- Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A Song of Ice and Fire George R.R. Martin- The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
- Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
- The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
- Songbook by Nick Hornby
- 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 Desiree 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 Wifeby Audrey Niffenegger
- To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbirdby 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 Suicidesby 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
And there we have it. the complete list!
** note. I did not write this list, I found it on an amazing blog. But for the life of me, I cannot find it now. If you know where I can so that I can credit, or it was you that wrote this list, please let me know so that I can link to your post!
Is this challenge something you’d like to do? Let me know in the comments down below!
Peace and pages
Amy
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