The world of Gilmore Girls is filled with bright, shiny, articulate characters who are thoroughly invested not only in popular culture via television, movies, and music, but also are tremendously well aware and informed of the written word, delivered in a variety of media. From the pilot’s first scene at Luke’s diner, with Lorelai’s Kerouac reference passing right over the head of the clueless youth trying to pick up first her, then Rory, to the “Dorothy Parker Drank Here” production company logo at the end of every episode, the creative team has infused the Girls’ world with literary significance.

In Stars Hollow, Hartford, New Haven, and elsewhere, we see readers reading—books, textbooks, magazines, and newspapers—on a regular basis. Characters visit the Black, White, and Read Bookstore (although mostly for movies), shop at the Stars Hollow Bookstore and library sales, and order books online. While books are clearly important to many of Gilmore Girls’s main characters, it is Rory Gilmore, a.k.a. “the thing that reads a lot” (1-4), who is at the heart of all of the show’s literary references. Her relationship with words significantly helps shape and define her relationship with the rest of the world.

Volume I

As the show begins, Rory is deeply invested in her world of books—indeed, at this point in her relatively sheltered, small-town life, she lives in something of an ivory tower constructed of various tomes. Rory is not worldly; her small but intimate circle of friends is basically Lorelai and Lane. Rory’s immersion shields her from  …