Tick off how many books you have read off the ultimate Rory Gilmore reading list complete with all of the books seen and mentioned in Gilmore Girls. From Dean noticing Rory reading her first Melville to Jess borrowing Howl by Allen Ginsberg, we have put together the definitive list of books in Gilmore Girls. We have included all books mentioned in Gilmore Girls' first seven seasons and then the sequel A Year In The Life.

“Why don’t you stay home and read The Bell Jar? It’d have the same effect.” – Lorelai Gilmore

Season One

Episode 1: Pilot

• On The Road by Jack Kerouac (Season 1, Episode 1)
• Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Season 1, Episode 1)
• Steven King (Season 1, Episode 1)
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Season 1, Episode 1)
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Season 1, Episode 1)
• The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen (Season 1, Episode 1)

Episode 2: The Lorelai's First Day at Chilton

• Leo Tolstoy Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Balzac and George Sand to name a few (Season 1, Episode 2)
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Season 1, Episode 2)
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Season 1, Episode 2)
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (Season 1, Episode 2)
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Season 1, Episode 2)
• Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (Season 1, Episode 2)
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens  (Season 1, Episode 2)
• Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling  (Season 1, Episode 2)

Episode 3: Kill Me Now

• A Mencken Chrestomathy by H.R. Mencken (Season 1, Episode 3)
• My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken (first edition) (Season 1, Episode 3)

Episode 4: The Deer Hunters

• Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare (Season 1, Episode 4)
• The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare (Season 1, Episode 4)
• Richard III by Shakespeare  (Season 1, Episode 4)
• Sonnet 126 by Shakespeare (Season 1, Episode 4)
• Sonnet 145 by Shakespeare (Season 1, Episode 4)

Episode 8: Love and War and Snow

• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (Season 1, Episode 8)

Episode 9: Rory's Dance

• The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker (Season 1, Episode 9)

Episode 10: Forgiveness and Stuff

• Metamorphoses by Franz Kafka (Season 1, Episode 10)

Episode 11: Paris is Burning

• Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust (Season 1, Episode 11)
• New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson (Season 1, Episode 11)

Episode 12: Double Date

• Unabridged Journal of Sylvia Plath (Season 1, Episode 12)
• A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (Season 1, Episode 12)

Episode 14: That Damn Donna Reed

• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (Season 1, Episode 14)

Episode 15: Christopher Returns

• The Compact English Dictionary (Season 1, Episode 15)

Episode 16: Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Season 1, Episode 16)

Episode 17: The Breakup, Part 2

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee (Season 1, Episode 17)
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (Season 1, Episode 17)

Episode 20: P.S. I Lo...

• Ulysses by James Joyce (Season 1, Episode 20)
• Out of Africa by Karen Blixen (Season 1, Episode 20)
• The Art of Fiction by David Lodge (Season 1, Episode 20)

Other Authors Mentioned During Gilmore Girls Season 1:

• Henry James (Season 1, Episode 20)
• Hunter S Thompson (Season 1, Episode 8)
• Charlotte Bronte (Season 1, Episode 8)
• William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Webster (Season 1, Episode 4)

Season Two

“We’ll go to a bookstore I could watch you browse for 6 or 7 hours” – Dean 

Episode 2: Hammers and Veils

• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (Season 2, Episode 2)

Episode 3: Red Light on the Wedding Night

• Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman (Season 2, Episode 3)
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Season 2, Episode 3)

Episode 4: Road Trip to Harvard

• Who Moved my Cheese? by Spencer Johnson (Season 2, Episode 4)
• Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (Season 2, Episode 4)
• Letters from a Stoic by Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Season 2, Episode 4)
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Season 2, Episode 4)
• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Season 2, Episode 4)

Episode 5: Nick & Nora/Sid & Nancy

• Howl by Allen Ginsberg (Season 2, Episode 5)
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (Season 2, Episode 5)

Episode 10: The Bracebridge Dinner

• The Iliad by Homer (Season 2, Episode 10)
• The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (Season 2, Episode 10)

Episode 12: Richard in Stars Hollow

• Summer of Fear by T Jefferson Parker (Season 2, Episode 12)
• The Scarecrow of Oz by L Frank Baum (Season 2, Episode 12)
• Contact by Carl Sagan (Season 2, Episode 12)

Episode 12: A-Tisket, A-Tasket

• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (Season 2, Episode 13)
• The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman (Season 2, Episode 13)

Episode 14: It Should've Been Lorelai

• The Mourning Bride by William Congreve (Season 2, Episode 14)

Episode 15: Lost and Found

• Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E Lee (Season 2, Episode 15)
• Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (Season 2, Episode 15)
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel(Season 2, Episode 15)
• Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger (Season 2, Episode 15)
• Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski (Season 2, Episode 15)

Episode 16: There's the Rub

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Season 2, Episode 16)

Other Authors Mentioned In Gilmore Girls Season 2:

• JD Salinger (Season 2, Episode 16)
• Euell Gibbons (Season 2, Episode 15)
• Ernest Hemingway (Season 2, Episode 13)
• Gustave Flaubert (Season 2, Episode 12)
• Jack Kerouac Franz Kafka (Season 2, Episode 16)
• Charles Bukowski (Season 2, Episode 16)
• Jane Austen (Season 2, Episode 16)

Season Three

“If the Poe’s fight, will it punch a hole in the space time continuum?” – Lorelai Gilmore

Episode 2: Haunted Leg

• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (Season 3, Episode 2)

Episode 2: I Solemnly Swear

• Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (Season 3, Episode 11)
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Season 3, Episode 11)
• Eloise at the Plaza by Kay Thompson (Season 3, Episode 11)

Episode 12: Lorelai Out Of Water

• Macbeth by William Shakespeare (Season 3, Episode 12) 

Episode 13: Dear Emily and Richard

• Europe Through the Back Door by Rick Steves (Season 3, Episode 13)
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Season 3, Episode 13)

Episode 14: Swan Song

• The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton (Season 3, Episode 14)

Episode 15: Face-Off

• Othello by William Shakespeare (Season 3, Episode 15)

Episode 16: The Big One

• I’m with the Band by Pamela Des Barres (Season 3, Episode 16)

Episode 17: A Tale Of Poes And Fire

• The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe (Season 3, Episode 17)
• The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe (Season 3, Episode 17)
• In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (Season 3, Episode 17)
• Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (Season 3, Episode 17)

Episode 18: Happy Birthday Baby

• Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Season 3, Episode 18)

Episode 19: Keg! Max!

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (Season 3, Episode 19)
• James Bond by Ian Fleming (Season 3, Episode 19)
• Henry VI by Shakespeare (Season 3, Episode 19)

Episode 20: Say Goodnight Gracie

• The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (Season 3, Episode 20)

Episode 21: Here Comes The Son

• Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs (Season 3, Episode 21)
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Season 3, Episode 21)

Episode 22: Those Are Strings Pinocchio

• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (Season 3, Episode 22)
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Season 3, Episode 22)
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (Season 3, Episode 22)
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Season 3, Episode 22)
• In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (Season 3, Episode 22)

Other Authors Mentioned In Gilmore Girls Season 3:

• William Faulkner (Season 3, Episode 22)
• Jane Austen (Season 3, Episode 22)
• Eudora Welty (Season 3, Episode 22)

Season Four

“Did anyone think Sylvia Plath wasn’t crazy but was just cold?” – Lorelai Gilmore

Episode 3: The Hobbit, The Sofa and Digger Stiles

• Atonement by Ian McEwan (Season 4, Episode 3)
• Haiku (Volume 2) Spring by R.H. Blyth (Season 4, Episode 3)

Episode 4: Chicken or Beef?

• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (Season 4, Episode 4)

Episode 5: The Fundamental Things Apply

• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (Season 4, Episode 5)
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway (Season 4, Episode 5)
• Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Season 4, Episode 5)

Episode 6: An Affair to Remember

• The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories by Ernest Hemingway (Season 4, Episode 6)

Episode 7: The Festival of Living Art

• 1984 by George Orwell (Season 4, Episode 7)

Episode 10: The Nanny and the Professor

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Season 4, Episode 10)
• Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann (Season 4, Episode 10)

Episode 11: In The Clamor and the Clangor

• The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike (Season 4, Episode 11)

Episode 12: A Family Matter

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Season 4, Episode 12)

Episode 16: The Reigning Lorelai

• The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (Season 4, Episode 16)

Episode 17: Girls in Bikinis, Boys Doin' the Twist

• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (Season 4, Episode 17)
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Season 4, Episode 17)

Episode 18: Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Boom!

• Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien (Season 4, Episode 18)
• Richard III by Shakespeare (Season 4, Episode 18)
• Macbeth by Shakespeare (Season 4, Episode 18)

Episode 19: Afterboom

• The Trial by Franz Kafka (Season 4, Episode 19)

Episode 21: Last Week Fights, This Week Tights

• The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Season 4, Episode 21)

Other Authors Mentioned In Gilmore Girls Season 4:

• Geoffrey Chaucer (Season 4, Episode 22)
• Euclid (Season 4, Episode 22)
• Niccolò Machiavelli (Season 4, Episode 22)
• Franz Kafka (Season 4, Episode 22)
• Oscar Wilde (Season 4, Episode 7)
• Hans Christian Andersen (Season 4, Episode 6)

Season Five

"I just take a book with me everywhere. It's a habit." – Rory Gilmore

Episode 1: Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller

• On the Road by Jack Kerouac (Season 5, Episode 1)
• Daisy Miller by Henry James (Season 5, Episode 1)

Episode 2: A Messenger, Nothing More

• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Season 5, Episode 2)

Episode 3: Written in the Stars

• The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford (Season 5, Episode 3)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare (Season 5, Episode 3)

Episode 5: We Got Us a Pippi Virgin

• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (Season 5, Episode 5)

Episode 6: Norman Mailer, I'm Pregnant!

• The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (Season 5, Episode 6)
• The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer (Season 5, Episode 6)
• The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as a History by Norman Mailer (Season 5, Episode 6)
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon (Season 5, Episode 6)

Episode 9: Emily Says Hello

• A Girl from Yamhill by a Beverly Cleary (Season 5, Episode 9)
• Like Water for Chocolate trans. Carol and Thomas Christenson by Laura Esquivel (Season 5, Episode 9)
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (Season 5, Episode 9)

Episode 10: But Not as Cute as Pushkin

• Yoga for Dummies by Georg Feuerstein and Larry Payne (Season 5, Episode 10)

Episode 12: Come Home

• My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh (Season 5, Episode 12)
• The Nancy Drew Series by Carolyn Keene (Season 5, Episode 12)

Episode 15: Jews and Chinese Food

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (Season 5, Episode 15)
• Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein (Season 5, Episode 15)
• Book character Tom Sawyer is also mentioned. (Season 5, Episode 15)

Episode 17: Pulp Friction

• He’s Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo (Season 5, Episode 17)
• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (Season 5, Episode 17)

Episode 20: How Many Kropogs to Cape Cod?

• Ethics by Spinoza (Season 5, Episode 20)

Episode 21: Blame Booze and Melville

• Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Season 5, Episode 21)

Episode 22: A House Is Not a Home

• The Illiad by Homer (Season 5, Episode 22)

Other Authors Mentioned In Gilmore Girls Season 5:

• Robert Frost (Season 5, Episode 3)
• P.G. Wodehouse (Season 5, Episode 5)
• Marcel Proust (Season 5, Episode 5)
• Gore Vidal (Season 5, Episode 6)
• Gabriel García Marquez (Season 5, Episode 6)
• Charles Dickens (Season 5, Episode 4)

Season Six

“It’s usually at this point in the John le Carré novels where things start to go horribly wrong” – Richard Gilmore

Episode 4: Always a Godmother, Never a God

• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Season 6, Episode 4)
• Revolution from Within (Season 6, Episode 4)
• The Rigveda (Season 6, Episode 4)

Episode 5: We've Got Magic To Do

• Molloy by Samuel Beckett (Season 6, Episode 5)

Episode 6: Welcome to the Dollhouse

• John le Carré (Season 6, Episode 6)

Episode 7: Twenty-One Is The Loneliest Number

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Season 6, Episode 7)

Episode 8: Let Me Hear Your Balalaikas Ringing Out

• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (Season 6, Episode 8)

Episode 9: The Prodigal Daughter Returns

• The Prodigal Daughter Returns (Season 6, Episode 9)
• Primary Colors by Joe Klein (Season 6, Episode 9)

Episode 10: He's Slippin' 'Em Bread ... Dig?

• Beowulf (Season 6, Episode 10)
• The Chronicles of Narnia (Season 6, Episode 10)

Episode 11: The Perfect Dress

• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Season 6, Episode 11)
• Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt (Season 6, Episode 11)

Episode 13: Friday Night's Alright for Fighting

• Sweeney Todd (a character from The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance) (Season 6, Episode 13)

Episode 16: Bridesmaids Revisited

• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (Season 6, Episode 16)
• David Foster Wallace (Season 6, Episode 16)

Episode 17: I'm OK, You're OK

• Charlotte’s Web (Season 6, Episode 17)

Episode 20: Super Cool Party People

• The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (Season 6, Episode 20)

Season Seven

"My books look sad. Can books look sad?" – Rory Gilmore

Episode 1: The Long Morrow

• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Season 7, Episode 1)
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau (Season 7, Episode 1)

Episode 3: Lorelai's First Cotillion

• Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White (Season 7, Episode 3)
• Sexus by Henry Miller (Season 7, Episode 3)

Episode 8: Introducing Lorelai Planetarium

• Ironweed by William Kennedy (Season 7, Episode 8)

Episode 9: Knit, People, Knit!

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Season 7, Episode 9)

Episode 14: Farewell, My Pet

• Eva Luna by Isabel Allende (Season 7, Episode 14)
• House of Spirits by Isabel Allende (Season 7, Episode 14)

Episode 15: I'm a Kayak, Hear Me Roar

• The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyer (Season 7, Episode 15)

Episode 17: Gilmore Girls Only

• Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (Season 7, Episode 17)

Episode 21: Unto The Breach

• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (Season 7, Episode 21)

Episode 22: Bon Voyage

• Robert’s Rules of Order by General Henry M Robert - (Season 7, Episode 22)

Other Authors Mentioned In Gilmore Girls Season 7

• Herman Melville (Season 7, Episode 18)
• Jay McInerney (Season 7, Episode 18)
• Louise Erdrich (Season 7, Episode 18)
• Cormac McCarthy (Season 7, Episode 1)
• Samuel Johnson (Season 7, Episode 5)

A Year In The Life

"I can't believe we get to sit around and talk about books and get graded." – Rory Gilmore

Winter

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Spring

• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu
• Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Summer

• Wild by Cheryl Strayed
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
• I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
• Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth 

Fall

• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• Call of the Wild by Jack London
• The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Thanks for reading "The Rory Gilmore Reading List: Every Book Mentioned In Gilmore Girls" on January Media.