The Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge

Yep, yet another reading challenge. This is actually the one that jump-started my motivation to get involved in reading challenges when I came across it a couple weeks ago in the sidebar at Book Journey while joining the meme It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's no secret how I feel about The Gilmore Girls. I went head-over-heals when my niece introduced me to them in the summer of 2007. That's when she began bringing over for her sleepovers at her Grandma's her boxed season sets that she'd been collecting from birthday and holiday gifts for over a year. At the time she had 1-4. She left them with me as school started in the fall, claiming she wouldn't have the time and it would free up shelf space for her. It was part of her campaign to ease the pain of the six month library closure we were in the midst of at that time. She'd also left almost two dozen YA novels with me. Eventually she left seasons 5 and 6 with me as well. And I still have them though I've made it clear to her that she has only to say the word and they would go home with her--along with the season 7 set that my Mom, sister and I ordered online last spring after we'd watched the first 6 together and couldn't stand to leave off with that season 6 finale.

At any rate, from the get go I identified most with Rory even though I never went to prep school nor even on to college until I was nearly 30, didn't have a steady boyfriend in high-school, didn't have a single mother or rich grandparents. It was Rory's relationship with books and reading that was identical to my own as a kid and teen though I had to depend much more on the libraries than Rory seemed to as I wasn't really encouraged to spend money on books. It's not that I never did, it was just frowned upon as wasteful as long as there were plenty of books in the public or school libraries I hadn't read yet. I still carry a bit of that sense of shame or guilt whenever contemplating spending money on books.

In spite of that Ed and I had built up a personal library of nearly 1000 volumes by 2001, 22 years into our marriage. We sold over half of them after Ed lost his tech job that year and the rest were left behind in storage when we fled the Silicon Valley by bus with a duffel and backpack and two cat crates in August 2001. The backpack full of books was the extent of what I rescued. That experience, as my psyche had been well prepared for, still feels like a punishment for having collected them in the first place.

And yet it wasn't long before I was collecting them again even while living with my in-laws. First the World Book Encyclopedia set I bought off the library at $1 per volume followed ten days latter by a Britannica Great Books set also for $1 per volume which replaced the set we had left behind in California (actually we had lost 3/4 of that set in a previous move out of the Rogue Valley in 1987). That was in 2005 soon after I'd started my blog and discovered the book blogging world but it wasn't until 2008 that I had my first contact with publicists and authors offering review copies and giveaway copies and since then our personal library has begun to overflow our tiny room. It's not nearly the same as before as most of these aren't chosen according to personal taste and my lost library was better than 50% writer's reference and NF related to research for my stories and I have hope (or fantasies) of replacing them someday.

At any rate, getting back on track here, the Gilmore Girls challenge involves reading books, stories and plays on the list of those mentioned or featured in a scene somewhere on a Gilmore Girls episode. Someone actually made the list! I'd been thinking of watching the entire series again for just that purpose. You can find the list on the challenge entry post linked to the picture above as well as the Mr Linky sign-up.

The challenge runs from January 1 through December 31 this year. There are three levels of involvement in this challenge:

• Emily: Read 5 books from at least two different categories.
• Lorelai: Read 10 books from at least three different categories.
• Rory: Read 20 books from at least four different categories

The five categories: classics, non-fiction, modern classics, children/YA, other

And of course, with my declared affinity with Rory I have to aim for the Rory level even though I'm getting in with the year nearly half gone already and there isn't one title on the list which I happened to have read since January. But there are titles that crossover with one or more of the other challenges I have and/or will join this year and it appears that when there is a movie based on the item that watching the movie counts.

I'm not going to declare my list at this time but this is the post I will update as I read any item on it and also link to any reviews of such items I may post.