Top 10 Books for the Gilmore Girls Revival

We can all agree that Rory Gilmore is one of the biggest consumers of books in modern-day television. Her book list references in the original series of Gilmore Girls numbered 339.  Inquiring minds want to know: what do you think she has been reading the past 9 years since we saw her last in the Gilmore Girls finale?  We ventured to guess the top 10 books that Rory will reference in this month’s revival series: Gilmore Girls Revival: “A Year in the Life.” Let’s see how many we guess correctly while we are on our treadmills working off all that turkey and apple pie on November 25th!

1. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

We predict Donna Tartt and her Pulitzer Prize winning book will be a shoo-in for the upcoming series.  London Review of Books calling it “a children’s book for adults” would have made it all the more appealing to well-known book snob, Rory.  I can picture Rory and her new British mates going to book readings in pubs. Rory would find this polarizing book akin to other book review snubbed books like The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye.

2. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

I imagine Rory would have been waiting in the rain by the closest bookstore out of intellectual curiosity for this novel. She would certainly mourn Harper Lee’s untimely death. Even if disappointed with the book,  she would respect it as a “rough draft of the sequel to the classic.” I believe she will also have a few sassy quips about the people who returned the book for reasons of marketing manipulation. We’ll see if she mentions it in a few weeks.

3. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

This is my best guess for the book Emily is reading while sipping on scotch in the library and deeply missing Richard. 1Q84 is a bizarre love story set in an alternate reality where Tengo and Aomame search for each other on every page. After reading Murakami, “Readers emerge several hundred pages later as if from a trance, convinced they’ve made contact with something significant, if not entirely sure what that something is.” This sounds like the exact experience Emily needs to simultaneously escape and embrace her grief over losing Richard.

4. Hard Choices by Hillary Clinton

Remember how Rory used to sit with Dean and watch Hillary’s speeches on C-Span? The New York Times calls this book, “a subtle, finely calibrated work…with succinct and often shrewd appraisals of the complex web of political, economic, and historical forces in play around the world.” Combined with the current election, surely Clinton will be a book topic in one of the morning coffee runs to Luke’s.

5. The Sacredness of Questioning Everything by David Dark

This very unusual view on agnosticism would be reason for Rory to include this book on her Goodreads list. “According to author David Dark, when religion won’t tolerate questions, objections, or differences of opinion, and when it only brings to the table threats of excommunication, violence, and hellfire, it obstructs our ability to think, empathize, and live lives of authenticity and genuine engagement. The God of the Bible not only encourages questions; the God of the Bible demands them.” Rory and her 65K followers would give the book 4 stars and comments about the book would include the Prince reference and other cultural artifacts she found note-worthy.

6. The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

This complicated author was skipped over in the original series even though Infinite Jest was very hip, and I for one was surprised it didn’t receive a mention. Perhaps upon learning of his death in 2008, she came across Wallace’s work and devoured everything from his magnum opus to short stories and essays. Rory may just make the original oversight up to the David Foster Wallace in the revival series by showing us The Pale King on her new bookshelf of must-reads.

7. The New Jim Crow: Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

After campaigning for Obama on the election press bus, we hope and believe Rory will have talked books with Obama himself, thus solidifying her continued interest (and possibly activism) in African-American cultural affairs. This book explores the injustices caused by “targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.” At the very least, Rory’s voracious reading of books in the anthropology genre would cause this book to pique her interest.

8. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Try as she might to avoid popular fiction, one of her red-eye flights from London was most certainly accompanied by this popular psychological thriller. She would find many parallels with Amy Dunne living the life of an alpha-female perfectionist. Rory and Lena Dunham may even host a book club event. Lane would be there and have a few snarky comments of her own about the movie.

9. Mockingjay (Hunger Games #3) by Suzanne Collins

The New York Times Sunday Book Review and Rory would agree; this book “channels the political passion of “1984,” the memorable violence of “A Clockwork Orange,” the imaginative ambiance of “The Chronicles of Narnia” and the detailed inventiveness of “Harry Potter.” I can picture a classic Lorelei costume party in the revival series where Rory dresses up as Katniss. Bonus trivia: Danny Strong, who played Paris’ boyfriend at Yale, co-wrote several “Hunger Games” movies. This connection will certainly influence Amy Sherman Palladino’s script.

10. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Certainly, Rory and the rest of the Londoners on the tube would have read this book. This book description boasts that it will forever change the way you look at other people’s lives. We predict Lorelei dragging Rory to see this movie after escaping a Friday night dinner. Rory would go, but only for the candy and popcorn.

P.S. Runner Up: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

P.P.S. Want more from book lovers in books, movies, and tv?

Here are Ten Characters who are Fellow Book Nerds

Challenge Accepted

Take on the 339 book challenge from Rory on Goodreads HERE.

Take a quiz to see how many books you have read from Rory’s original list HERE.

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