The Reading Lists of Your Favorite Fictional Characters

If you’ve ever seen Gilmore Girls, there’s a pretty good chance you know that Rory Gilmore is as big a bookworm as they come — maybe that’s why we’ve always liked her so much. Recently, we stumbled on this exhaustive list of all the books Rory has read, and after we caught our breath (there’s some two hundred and fifty books on there!) we decided to compile a few more of the books we’ve noticed some of our favorite fictional characters reading — so as to follow along, of course. Click through to see what books Don Draper, Margot Tenanbaum, and Daria Morgendorffer have been occupying themselves with recently, and let us know if we’ve missed your favorite fictional bookworm in the comments!

Rory Gilmore, Gilmore Girls

Rory reads everything, from contemporary literature to criticism to biographies to classics. She’s probably the most literate person we feel like we know. Just a sampling:

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Old School by Tobias Wolff
Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

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WotV

You forgot to add The Bad Twin for Sawyer in LOST. It was part of the mythology and is a real novel written as a tie in. I wrote an analysis here: http://loststudies.com/1.3/bad_twin.html

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Lucy

Ahh, Sawyer. There are few things sexier than an attractive man reading a book.

JenH

I've been going back and forth reading the books on Rory's list and reading whatever I want to read. It's exhausting, hahahaha!

julie

Rory and Jess bonded over The Fountainhead!!!

JoeH

Here's another one for ya. Bert from Sesame Street: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Bert%27s_books

Jesse

I love Frank O'Hara, but I'd hardly call him "stolidly masculine."

Matt

Capt. Picard also read the Epic of Gilgamesh and it is suggested he read Moby Dick.

Rayne

I am so glad Lucas Scott was included, but I am a little disappointed that Julius Caesar was not on his list. It was the book given to Lucas by his mother in the very first episode, and there were references to it throughout the entire series. Although Chad Michael Murray left One Tree Hill, in the series finale Lucas' friend Haley finds the copy of the book he was given ten years ago. Julius Caesar was used as symbolism to represent Lucas when he was not physically there, which is why it is an important element of the television show and character.

martipar

Moby Dick is mentioned in the book 'Matilda' her dad calls it 'American filth'

Shazza

Actually, you *should* have included Atlas Shrugged on the list. He was going to buy that with his $2500 bonus check at the suggestion of Mr. Cooper in Season 1!

JACK: So where do we go from here? SAWYER: I'm working on it. JACK: Really? Because it looked to me like you were reading a book. SAWYER: I heard once Winston Churchill read a book every night, even during the Blitz. He said it made him think better. It's how I like to run things. I think. I'm sure that doesn't mean that much to you, 'cause back when you were calling the shots, you pretty much just reacted. See, you didn't think, Jack, and as I recall, a lot of people ended up dead. JACK: I got us off the Island. SAWYER: But here you are . . . right back where you started. So I'm gonna go back to reading my book, and I'm gonna think, 'cause that's how I saved your ass today. And that's how I'm gonna save Sayid's tomorrow. All you gotta do is go home, get a good night's rest. Let me do what I do.