5 Books to Read If You Love Gilmore Girls

Fans of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life will be familiar with Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. Sure, Lorelei never actually managed to hike the full trail, but this is the book that helped her work through the loss of her father and her crisis over Luke. Wild follows Strayed’s impulsive decision to hike more than 1,000 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, alone, with no training whatsoever. After hitting rock bottom, Strayed set off on a journey that would prove to be far more perilous, suspenseful, and healing than she ever could have imagined.

Available at Amazon | $10

If there’s anything that Gilmore Girls taught us, it’s that there’s more than one way to be a mother. The Bad Mother’s Handbook chronicles a year in the life of Charlotte, Karen, and Nan—three generations of women trying to navigate motherhood and make ends meet while living together in one cramped little house. It’s a funny, genuine story about the often frustrating bonds of familial love.

Available at Amazon | $10

If you’re missing Gilmore Girls, nothing beats a memoir from Lorelei Gilmore herself. In this collection of personal essays, actress Lauren Graham opens up about life and love in Hollywood. She recounts awkward auditions (like the time she was asked to “audition her butt” for a role), the perils of meeting men at award shows (where you’re setting the bar “way too high”), and the one time she tried to go vegan to bond with Ellen DeGeneres. Of course, she also reflects on the making of Gilmore Girls and what it meant to return to her iconic role years later, offering a rare glimpse behind the scenes for fans of Lorelei and Rory.
 

Available at Amazon | $13

Ann August is wise beyond her years. Her mother Adele is almost the opposite: childlike and excitable and always on the move. With Adele’s larger-than-life dreams to guide them, mother and daughter pick up and leave Wisconsin behind for the promise of California and stardom. Adele’s antics are perhaps a little more frightening that Lorelei’s (abandoning her daughter on the highway, for instance, or forcing her into a showbiz career), but the novel is still driven by the eccentric bond between a wild-child mother and her clear-headed daughter.

Available at Amazon | $13

Bernadette Fox doesn’t quite fit in with the other upper crust, private school moms. Her agoraphobia has also grown so bad that she’s hired a personal assistant in India to handle her daily errands. Bernadette rarely leaves the house … until one day she vanishes entirely, just before the family is set to go to Antarctica. Now it’s up to Bee, her fifteen-year-old daughter and best friend, to find her. Semple's epistolary novel, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, is a hysterical and ultimately touching story about mothers and daughters.

Available at Amazon | $9