Required reading: Gilmore Girls
Every book seen in Gilmore Girls, in order of appearance.
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir, 1949Published in France in 1949, and the Vatican later put it on its Index of Forbidden Books.
Seen in S1 E1, Rory GilmoreBuyMistress of Mellyn
Victoria Holt, 1960Victoria Holt's 1960 debut sends a governess to a Cornish mansion with a brooding widower, so Jane Eyre with better weather.
Seen in S1 E1, Rory GilmoreBuyMoby-Dick
Herman Melville, 1851Melville's 1851 whale book sold so poorly in his lifetime that he spent his later years working as a customs inspector in New York.
Seen in S1 E1, Rory GilmoreBuyMadame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert, 1856Flaubert was put on trial for obscenity over this one in 1857 and acquitted.
Seen in S1 E1, Rory GilmoreBuyA Mencken Chrestomathy
H. L. Mencken, 1949Mencken picked the pieces himself and published the collection in 1949, a year after a stroke ended his writing life.
Seen in S1 E3, Richard GilmoreBuyThe Portable Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker, 1944Viking published it in 1944, and it's one of only three Viking Portables never to go out of print.
Seen in S1 E9, Rory GilmoreBuyThe Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath, 2000Karen V. Kukil edited the full journals from Plath's papers at Smith College, and Anchor published them in 2000.
Seen in S1 E12, Rory GilmoreBuyAnna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy, 1878Tolstoy serialized it from 1875 to 1877 before it came out as a book in 1878.
Seen in S1 E16, Dean ForesterBuyThe Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath, 1963Plath published it in England in 1963 under the name Victoria Lucas, and it didn't come out in the US under her own name until 1971.
Seen in S1 E17, Lorelai GilmoreBuyOut of Africa
Isak Dinesen, 1937Karen Blixen published it in 1937 as Isak Dinesen, about the coffee farm she ran outside Nairobi until 1931.
Seen in S1 E20, Lorelai GilmoreBuyUlysses
James Joyce, 1922The whole novel covers one day in Dublin, June 16, 1904.
Seen in S1 E20, Rory GilmoreBuyMrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf, 1925Woolf published it in 1925, and the whole novel takes place on one June day in London while Clarissa Dalloway preps a party.
Seen in S2 E4, Rory GilmoreBuyHowl and Other Poems
Allen Ginsberg, 1956City Lights published it in 1956 as number four in the Pocket Poets series, and customs and the San Francisco police went after it until a judge ruled it wasn't obscene in 1957.
Seen in S2 E5, Jess MarianoBuySavage Beauty
Nancy Milford, 2001Nancy Milford spent about thirty years on this biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, who won the 1923 Pulitzer for poetry and wrote the original candle that burns at both ends.
Seen in S2 E7, Rory GilmoreBuyThe Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner, 1929Faulkner's 1929 novel opens inside Benjy Compson's head, where the timeline jumps without warning.
Seen in S2 E7, Rory GilmoreBuyThe Last Empire
Gore Vidal, 2001Gore Vidal's essays from 1992 to 2000, published in 2001 and packed with shots at Washington.
Seen in S2 E7, Rory GilmoreBuyThe Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty, 1980The 1980 collection gathers forty-one stories, including "Why I Live at the P.O.," about a sister who moves into the post office to get away from her family.
Seen in S2 E7, Rory GilmoreBuyThe Scarecrow of Oz
L. Frank Baum, 1915Baum published it in 1915 as the ninth Oz book.
Seen in S2 E12, Rory GilmoreBuySummer of Fear
T. Jefferson Parker, 1993T. Jefferson Parker's 1993 thriller follows a newspaper reporter chasing a killer in Southern California.
Seen in S2 E12, Rory GilmoreBuyContact
Carl Sagan, 1985Carl Sagan's only novel, published in 1985, about a scientist who picks up a signal from space.
Seen in S2 E12, Rory GilmoreBuyThe Fountainhead
Ayn Rand, 1943Rand's 1943 novel stars an architect who would rather dynamite his own building than see it compromised, and twelve publishers turned it down.
Seen in S2 E13, Jess MarianoBuyThe Children's Hour
Lillian Hellman, 1934Hellman's first produced play opened on Broadway in 1934 and ran for 691 performances.
Seen in S2 E13, Rory GilmoreBuyLike Water for Chocolate
Laura Esquivel, 1989Laura Esquivel's 1989 novel has twelve chapters, one per month, each opening with a recipe, and Tita's cooking passes her feelings to everyone who eats it.
Seen in S2 E15, Kirk GleasonBuyLetters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1929Rilke wrote these ten letters between 1903 and 1908 to a 19-year-old military cadet who'd mailed him some poems.
Seen in S2 E15, Rory GilmoreBuyInherit the Wind
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, 1955Lawrence and Lee's 1955 play fictionalizes the 1925 Scopes trial, and they wrote it with McCarthyism in mind.
Seen in S2 E15, Rory GilmoreBuyOn the Road
Jack Kerouac, 1957Kerouac typed the draft on a roughly 120-foot scroll of taped-together paper in about three weeks in 1951, and Viking didn't publish it until 1957.
Seen in S2 E16, Paris GellerBuyPlease Kill Me
Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, 1996Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain built it from interviews and published it in 1996, covering the Velvet Underground through the Ramones.
Seen in S2 E19, Jess MarianoBuyThe Portable Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1954Walter Kaufmann edited and translated the Portable in 1954, and it includes all of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Seen in S2 E21, Lorelai GilmoreBuyWhat Color Is Your Parachute?
Richard N. Bolles, 1970Richard N. Bolles self-published the first version in 1970 and revised it for decades, selling millions of copies along the way.
Seen in S2 E21, Lorelai GilmoreBuy
Seen one we missed? Add a book and your handle goes on the entry.