The Gilmore Book Club

How Reading and Gilmore girls Can Change Your Life

I have always lived in two worlds. One is most definitely a world of books, but maybe more accurately, a world of imagination. Ever since I was little, I’ve been reading. Reading, and dreaming, and imagining. I adored reading, more than anything else. It didn’t matter that the other kids were playing tag or that my sister wanted to play house. And even when I did join in, my mind was always somewhere else. Because in my opinion, whatever world I was visiting then, whatever adventure I was accomplishing, whoever I was meeting, was far superior to anything we could have done as children. So it’s no surprise that for many reasons, I turned to books, to Gilmore Girls, and to the Rory Gilmore Challenge whenever I felt the need for something more.

For the past two years, I had done a physical challenge as my New Year’s Resolution. I liked trying to accomplish something different than the usual lose weight/ eat better/exercise more type of resolutions.  I had already run a marathon, and as proud as I am of that, I don’t think another one is in my future. So, I found the 2,015 miles in 2015 challenge. The title explains it all: you walk/run and keep track so that at the end of the year, you’ve gone 2,015 miles. My sister and I then did 2,016 miles in 2016. With many, many miles under my belt, I began to wonder about the next challenge. It had to be something that pushed me to grow and step outside my boundaries, something that made me add a new aspect of who I was. And I was tired of running. Yes, physically running is exhausting, but running from your own thoughts or feelings can be just as exhausting. In order to start a career, I started running away from my own voice- both intentionally and unintentionally. Being able to seamlessly adapt to the voice of different publications is the mark of a good freelance writer, and I had worked hard to do that. Don’t get me wrong- I love my freelance career, and I love the company I work for full-time, but those are all about how my voice blends with others. I needed something that was just me. It was time to stop running, to sit down, and to pick up a book.   

Through the vast world of the internet, I found Rory Gilmore Reading List. Nothing could have been a more perfect challenge for me. This list chronicles every piece of literature that the Gilmore Girls read or discussed. (Contrary to its title, Rory didn’t read all of these. Lorelei and Emily have books on this list too.) With a total of 349 stories, the Rory Gilmore Reading List is not for the faint of heart. While some entries on the list are poems or short stories and therefore easier and faster to read, some are over 900 pages. That’s more pages than even the largest Harry Potter books, and some, I might add, are not as entertaining. Nonetheless, I would read them all.

A book list doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would cause big changes in my life or enable deep personal growth. It’s not like I gave up everything I owned and traveled the world Eat, Pray, Love-style. I just read- and am still reading- a lot of books. Though there definitely is eating, praying, and loving in my life, the journeys I took while engrossed in a story changed and will forever continue to change my life even when I don’t realize it. In fact, probably especially when I don’t realize it. Isn’t that just the way things tend to happen? You read a book, think it was wonderful and move on to the next novel, or think it was terrible and never want to think about it again, and time moves on, and suddenly something happens- a big thing or a very small thing- that causes your mind to jump back to certain phrases or certain circumstances from that book you weren’t thinking about. And in that realization, a part of you changes. How small or big, it doesn’t matter, you’ve learned from that book. You’ve changed. You’ve grown. Books do this for us all the time, but they do so much more.  They help us to escape, to recharge, to question, to understand, to dream, to live, and to heal. I know I need that. I know I will always need books.

And out of all the books I own and all the books I’ve read, it’s still not enough. It will never be enough. The 350 books on this list won’t be enough. I know Rory Gilmore would agree. And so would Francie Nolan.

It’s a strange connection, but one that is created all the time. You read a book, most likely by yourself, but when you find that someone else has read the same story, you can’t help but feel a kinship with them. Even though your journeys through the words of a book were at different times and different places, you have still walked the same steps. Sharing your thoughts, reactions, and feelings over the same material bring you closer together even though you may have experienced something different. Now, the world of books seems to be overshadowed by TV and movies, but luckily the shared experiences are still just as powerful.

I’ve always felt at home among books, and from the narrator’s descriptions, Francie does too.

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