When I watch Gilmore Girls, I'm in high school again. My bedroom floor is splayed with spiral-bound notebooks filled with rushed assignments and a worn volume of Norton Anthology of English Literature. I'm downstairs, lounging on the couch next to my mom.

It's an example of my insouciant sense of time and desire to follow Carole King's voice into the fictional dreamland of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. It's also Tuesday night. I'm from a small town in New England with some charms of its own, but nowhere as magical as Stars Hollow. Me and my mom admiringly follow Rory and Lorelai around the town square, soaking up their acerbic wit and verbal flair. We convince ourselves that we, too, can converse like them, if only we had some Luke's coffee.

A caring community, quirky yet adorable characters, living down the street from everything you could ever need...there's a lot to romanticize in Gilmore Girls. My main point of fascination always centered on the books. How was Rory so well-read at 15? If I had a Dean, I would have closed the cover on Melville and let him search the rough waves for Moby Dick on his own. But Rory was devout in her consumption of literature, and after seven seasons plus a revival, her reading list totals to an intimidating 408 books, including literary canon notables and weighty tomes like Alexander Pushkin's biography and Sylvia Plath's unabridged journals.

To read every book on the list will take years, but it seems like a challenge Rory would support. Please add your favorite from the full list (found on Google) here: https://www.prettyopinionated.com/201...