In Gilmore Girls, aka the best show ever written, bright-eyed Rory Gilmore is continually seen reading a wide array of books. Whether in preparation for Harvard or for her time at Yale, she is always improving herself via literature.

Juxtapose this with Patrick Lenton, who found himself re-reading The Wheel of Time for the seventeenth time, grimly hoping the ingrained misogyny might somehow disappear if he just believed hard enough. What happened to his days of challenging himself? What about that one time he read Moby Dick and felt good for eight years? Patrick decided to take a leaf out of Rory’s books and read Rory’s books.

Book #1: 1984 by George Orwell

Is there any limit to the lessons we can learn from Gilmore Girls? I personally don’t think so. I’ll never forget watching season three and, after the first really big fight between Rory and Lorelai, my mother finishing her chardonnay and sagely stating, “And that is why you never try to give birth to a friend.” Boom, that’s good learning. The show also taught me not to try and solve my problems with spontaneous marriage and also maybe don’t steal yachts?

The first thing I learnt in the RGRC, however, is that despite claiming otherwise at pretentious university parties, I have never actually read 1984. “Oh yeah, it’s all about oppression, and surveillance, and at the end of the book, Gretel Killeen votes you off,” I probably stated, popping another bottle of Passion Pop.

But really, 1984 is the perfect book for the show. The methods of control that Big Brother puts in place to keep society tractable are suspiciously similar to the weird co-dependent relationship Lorelai has set up with her hot daughter. If Rory doesn’t voluntarily share every part of her life with Lorelai, she is conditioned to feel bad. Her mother creeping into her bed at 4am to discuss a piece of trivia she felt her daughter had withheld from her is basically the entire concept of the Thought Police. Rory is trained to love her oppressor, which – spoiler alert – is basically the moral of 1984. Also: Newspeak, the made-up language used by Big Brother to control communication itself, is eerily similar to the strange, truncated double-talk used by the Gilmore ladies.

Don’t miss the next installment of The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge, where Rory/Patrick Lenton tackles Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Curious to see the full reading list? Here you go:

1.) 1984 by George Orwell

2.) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

3.) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

4.) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

5.) An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

6.) Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

7.) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

8.) Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

9.) Archidamian War by Donald Kagan

10.) The Art of Fiction by Henry James

11.) The Art of War by Sun Tzu

12.) As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

13.) Atonement by Ian McEwan

14.) Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

15.) The Awakening by Kate Chopin

16.) Babe by Dick King-Smith

17.) Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi

18.) Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

19.) Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

20.) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

21.) Beloved by Toni Morrison

22.) Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney

23.) The Bhagava Gita

24.) The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy

25.) Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel

26.) A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy

27.) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

28.) Brick Lane by Monica Ali

29.) Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner

30.) Candide by Voltaire

31.) The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer

32.) Carrie by Stephen King

33.) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

34.) The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

35.) Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

36.) The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman

37.) Christine by Stephen King

38.) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

39.) A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

40.) The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

41.) The Collected Stories by Eudora Welty

42.) A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare

43.) Complete Novels by Dawn Powell

44.) The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton

45.) Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker

46.) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

47.) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

48.) Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac

49.) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

50.) The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

51.) The Crucible by Arthur Miller

52.) Cujo by Stephen King

53.) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

54.) Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

55.) David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D

56.) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

57.) The Da Vinci -Code by Dan Brown

58.) Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

59.) Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

60.) Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

61.) Deenie by Judy Blume

62.) The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

63.) The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx

64.) The Divine Comedy by Dante

65.) The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

66.) Don Quixote by Cervantes

67.) Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv

68.) Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

69.) Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

70.) Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook

71.) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

72.) Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn

73.) Eloise by Kay Thompson

74.) Emily the Strange by Roger Reger

75.) Emma by Jane Austen

76.) Empire Falls by Richard Russo

77.) Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol

78.) Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

79.) Ethics by Spinoza

80.) Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves

81.) Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

82.) Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

83.) Extravagance by Gary Krist

84.) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

85.) Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore

86.) The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan

87.) Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser

88.) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

89.) The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

90.) Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein

91.) The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

92.) Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce

93.) Fletch by Gregory McDonald

94.) Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

95.) The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

96.) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

97.) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

98.) Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

99.) Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers

100.) Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

101.) Gender Trouble by Judith Butler

102.) George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg

103.) Gidget by Fredrick Kohner

104.) Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

105.) The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

106.) The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo

107.) The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

108.) Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky

109.) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

110.) The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford

111.) The Gospel According to Judy Bloom

112.) The Graduate by Charles Webb

113.) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

114.) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

115.) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

116.) The Group by Mary McCarthy

117.) Hamlet by William Shakespeare

118.) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling

119.) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

120.) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

121.) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

122.) Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry

123.) Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare

124.) Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare

125.) Henry V by William Shakespeare

126.) High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

127.) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

128.) Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris

129.) The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton

130.) House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

131.) The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

132.) How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer

133.) How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

134.) How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland

135.) Howl by Allen Ginsberg

136.) The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

137.) The Iliad by Homer

138.) I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres

139.) In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

140.) Inferno by Dante

141.) Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

142.) Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy

143.) It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton

144.) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

145.) The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

146.) Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

147.) The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain

148.) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

149.) Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito

150.) The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander

151.) Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

152.) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

153.) Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence

154.) The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal

155.) Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

156.) The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield

157.) Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

158.) Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

159.) Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken

160.) Life of Pi by Yann Martel

161.) Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

162.) The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway

163.) The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen

164.) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

165.) Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton

166.) Lord of the Flies by William Golding

167.) The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

168.) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

169.) The Love Story by Erich Segal

170.) Macbeth by William Shakespeare

171.) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

172.) The Manticore by Robertson Davies

173.) Marathon Man by William Goldman

174.) The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

175.) Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir

176.) Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman

177.) Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

178.) The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer

179.) Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken

180.) The Merry Wives of Windsro by William Shakespeare

181.) The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

182.) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

183.) The Miracle Worker by William Gibson

184.) Moby Dick by Herman Melville

185.) The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin

186.) Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor

187.) A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman

188.) Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret

189.) A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars

190.) A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

191.) Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

192.) Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall

193.) My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh

194.) My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken

195.) My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest

196.) Myra Waldo’s Travel and Motoring Guide to Europe, 1978 by Myra Waldo

197.) My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

198.) The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

199.) The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

200.) The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

201.) The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin

202.) Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen

203.) New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson

204.) The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay

205.) Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

206.) Night by Elie Wiesel

207.) Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

208.) The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan

209.) Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell

210.) Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski

211.) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

212.) Old School by Tobias Wolff

213.) On the Road by Jack Kerouac

214.) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

215.) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

216.) The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan

217.) Oracle Night by Paul Auster

218.) Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

219.) Othello by Shakespeare

220.) Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

221.) The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan

222.) Out of Africa by Isac Dineson

223.) The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

224.) A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

225.) The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan

226.) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

227.) Peyton Place by Grace Metalious

228.) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

229.) Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington

230.) Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

231.) Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

232.) The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

233.) The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker

234.) The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche

235.) The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind

236.) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

237.) Property by Valerie Martin

238.) Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon

239.) Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

240.) Quattrocento by James Mckean

241.) A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall

242.) Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers

243.) The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

244.) The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

245.) Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

246.) Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

247.) Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin

248.) The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

249.) Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman

250.) The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

251.) R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton

252.) Rita Hayworth by Stephen King

253.) Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert

254.) Roman Holiday by Edith Wharton

255.) Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

256.) A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

257.) A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

258.) Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

259.) The Rough Guide to Europe, 2003 Edition

260.) Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi

261.) Sanctuary by William Faulkner

262.) Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

263.) Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller by Henry James

264.) The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum

265.) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

266.) Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

267.) The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

268.) The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

269.) Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman

270.) Selected Hotels of Europe

271.) Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell

272.) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

273.) A Separate Peace by John Knowles

274.) Several Biographies of Winston Churchill

275.) Sexus by Henry Miller

276.) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

277.) Shane by Jack Shaefer

278.) The Shining by Stephen King

279.) Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

280.) S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton

281.) Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut

282.) Small Island by Andrea Levy

283.) Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

284.) Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers

285.) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore

286.) The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht

287.) Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos

288.) The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker

289.) Songbook by Nick Hornby

290.) The Sonnets by William Shakespeare

291.) Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

292.) Sophie’s Choice by William Styron

293.) The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

294.) Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

295.) Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

296.) The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

297.) A Streetcar Named Desiree by Tennessee Williams

298.) Stuart Little by E. B. White

299.) Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

300.) Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust

301.) Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett

302.) Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber

303.) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

304.) Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

305.) Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry

306.) Time and Again by Jack Finney

307.) The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

308.) To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

309.) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

310.) The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare

311.) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

312.) The Trial by Franz Kafka

313.) The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson

314.) Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett

315.) Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

316.) Ulysses by James Joyce

317.) The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath

318.) Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

319.) Unless by Carol Shields

320.) Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

321.) The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers

322.) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

323.) Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard

324.) The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

325.) Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

326.) Walden by Henry David Thoreau

327.) Walt Disney’s Bambi by Felix Salten

328.) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

329.) We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker

330.) What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles

331.) What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell

332.) When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka

333.) Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson

334.) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee

335.) Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

336.) The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum

337.) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

338.) The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

339.) The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Patrick Lenton is a playwright, fiction writer and blogger, based in Sydney. He is into you. He blogs over at The Spontaneity Review, and likes to publish his stories in journals like Voiceworks, Best Australian Stories, TIDE and The Lifted Brow. He also edits a comedy writing anthology, The Sturgeon General.