The Real Rory Book List – Season Five

SEASON FIVE

Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller (5.1)

• Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller, Henry James

​RORY: So, what is this, a Henry James novel? The young lady acts up, and her family ships her off to Europe?

LORELAI: Oh, come on.

RORY: How fast did you tell Grandma that I had nothing to do this summer?LORELAI: I'm not shipping you off.

RORY: Oh, please!

LORELAI: I'm not. I'm just -- okay, maybe I am.

RORY: Ha!

LORELAI: I wasn't planning on it, but maybe in the back of my mind, I just thought–

RORY: -–Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller.

A Messenger, Nothing More (5.2)

• A Room With a View, E.M. Forster – Lorelai and Rory watch the movie adaptation after Rory asks her mom if she would like to see home movies of her and Emily's trip to Europe.

• Roman Holiday, Edith Wharton – ?

• The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown

BRIAN: Since they were both actually royalty, their child would have a real claim to the Judean throne, see? So Mary Magdalene goes to Gaul to have the kid. She's also supposed to run the church after his death, but that's not what Peter wants, right? But all that got covered up later by Constantine after the council of Nicea purged the Christian -- ZACH: Oh, my god! Will you stop talking about this! BRIAN: This is, like, the number-one book in the country. ZACH: Well, it's my number-one bummer.

​Written in the Stars (5.3)

• The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford – Not on the list.

We Got Us a Pippi Virgin (5.5)

• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon

• Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust; Plutarch’s Lives, volume 1 or 2 (trans. John Dryden, ed. Arthur Hugh Clough) – Not on the list.

​​Norman Mailer, I'm pregnant! (5.6)

• The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer

• The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History; The Executioner’s Song, Norman Mailer

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon – Not on the list.

Emily Says Hello (5.9)

• A Girl from Yamhill, Beverly Cleary; Like Water for Chocolate (trans. Carol and Thomas Christensen), Laura Esquivel – Not on the list.

• ​A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole – Marty's book.

• Less than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis –

• LORELAI: If you try hard enough, you can eventually find a showing of "St. Elmo's Fire" on the big screen. LUKE: Yes, that's what gets us the good seats at the Summits. LORELAI: Come on, admit it. Rob Lowe pretending to play the saxophone was incredibly hot. LUKE: Oh, I admit it. LORELAI: And also, Andrew McCarthy at his best. Though Less Than Zero runs a very close second.

But Not as Cute as Pushkin (5.10)

• Yoga for Dummies, Georg Feuerstein and Larry Payne – Not on the list.

Come Home (5.12)

• My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath, Seymour M. Hersh; The Nancy Drew Series, Carolyn Keene –

RORY: Seymour Hersh? The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh? Wow.

RORY: How can meeting Seymour Hersh be boring? I love him. I read My Lai Four when I was twelve and I’ve been obsessed with him ever since. LOGAN: You read a book about the My Lai massacre when you were twelve? RORY: Well, I polished off Nancy Drew that year too.

Jews and Chinese Food (5.15)

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers

​So...Good Talk (5.16)

• Catch-22, Joseph Heller – ?

• Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky; translated, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky – ?

• Pushkin: A Biography, T.J. Binyon – ?

• Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman – Not on the list.

Pulp Friction (5.17)

• He’s Just Not That Into You, Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo – Not on the list.

​How Many Kropogs to Cape Cod? (5.20)

• Ethics, Spinoza –

PROFESSOR: As we move on from the empiricist to the rationalist, it would be good to start thinking about the differences between the A posteriori truths, and the Apriority truths of the rationalist, which exists independent of experience. So for Wednesday if you would all take a crack at the first five chapters of Spinoza’s Ethics. That is, those of you who’s entire weekend won’t be consumed by books on wine and Haiti.

[He gestures at the stack of reference books piled in front of Rory.] RORY: Yes. My interests are teasingly diverse.