Rory Gilmore: A Fictional Character Turns a Reading Model for Young Female Readers

“I want to read like Rory Gilmore, because I am obsessed with her,” said one American Book  Tuber. “This week I want to read two books that Rory read in the first season of the Gilmore  Girls,” said the other one. “I feel like I have to read classics like Rory in the show, so this week I  am going to read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Anna Karenina by Tolstoy,” said  another BookTuber from Canada. The list goes on and on, to the point that they launched the  annual “Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge,” which began in 2020 (Buonocore, 2025).  Most of these Book Tubers are women in their 20s who grew up watching Gilmore Girls.  

The Gilmore Girls (Figure 2), which aired between 2000 and 2007, was a comedy-drama created  by Amy Sherman-Palladino, who tried to craft a show that felt honest, portraying a mother and  daughter who talk fast, think faster, and treat each other like equals (Savitch, 2025). 

It started while she and her husband traveled through New England on the East Coast of the  United States and experienced the charm and warmth of people who conversed on sidewalks and  were genuinely part of each other’s rhythm. That’s when Sherman-Palladino recreated New  England through her ‘imaginary town’ in The Gilmore Girls, named Stars Hollow (Figure 3). 

Just like many other characters in television dramas, Rory Gilmore is nothing but fictional. But  how could a fictional character like Rory Gilmore inspire the young female readers two decades  after the show ended? 

Harvey Graff, an American comparative social and cultural historian at the Ohio State  University, in his 1979 monograph “The Literacy Myth: Cultural Integration and Social Structure  in the Nineteenth Century,” mentioned that “literacy is represented as an unqualified good, a  marker of progress and a metaphorical light making clear the pathways to progress and  happiness” (O’Neill, 2023). This perspective on reading as a moral activity remains true today.  Deborah Brandt, English Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that literacy  remains a cultural mandate, taught and learned as a general good. With that in mind, Sherman Palladino’s fictional character, who loved reading paper books on every occasion, ranged from  classic to modern, philosophical to romance, and encouraged others around her to do the same;  and although Rory never expressed a belief that reading is a moral activity, she appeared to blend  her intelligence with her literacy (O’Neill, 2023).  

So, back to our question: how did Rory become a source of inspiration for the present-day young  female readers? It all started with a collaboration between two young female BookTubers, Ciara  Foster (UK) and Carolyn Marie (US), who are The Gilmore Girls fanatics and bookworms, and  announced the first challenge, called “Rory Gilmore 24 Readathon” (Ciara, 2020). Soon after,  the number of young female BookTubers participating in this annual challenge increased, and it  continues to this day. A ‘peer-influence’ did affect certain behavior, I assume. 

As librarians, how will you benefit from the readathon initiated by these young generation  BookTubers? 

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