Did Rory Gilmore think about the Roman Empire? In the past months there has been a lot of discussion about how often men think about the Roman Empire, but do women think about it too?

In the past month I have been running across multiple YouTube videos where people take the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge. These are often taken by people with popular reading channels, so the results are quite interesting. Many young women readers want to be like Rory, and are shocked when they have only read a small percentage of the books she was shown reading or discussing on Gilmore Girls.

There are a bunch of books that would not be read very much, but it is still interesting to see them talk about the books that they have read, plan to read or will never read.

Two interesting entries on the list make me think of the Roman Empire. I have yet to see either of these be checked off on a quiz.

The first is Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The edition shown above is the one volume abridged edition by D. M. Low. Even though it is abridged it still has almost 1,000 pages. I have this in my library, but have never read it.

I also have the two Gibbons volumes from the Britannica GREAT BOOKS series. These are non-abridged and together have almost 2,000 pages since the type is smaller and the pages are larger than many complete sets.

I have yet to read the complete work, but have read excerpts over the years. When I do finally decide to read the complete work I will probably read from an old six volume set that I have. The Milman edition was released in 1845 and was available in many different bindings. One source I saw said that the pages were printed and distributed to different book sellers who would then bind them for sell to customers. The six volumes each have around 600 pages, with more than 3,600 pages total.

I can not imagine Rory reading the complete Gibbon’s, but she probably read parts of it for school. Rory also read multiple books about the Greek Empire according to the challenge list.

But, this is not the only entry with Roman in the title that is on the list.

Roman Fever by Edith Wharton is also on the list. This is a short story of only about 20 pages. Edith Wharton wrote many short stories and others are included in the book shown above. The setting is in contemporary Rome, but the surrounding ruins from the Roman Empire are mentioned in the story.

Roman Fever also does not get checked off in the videos, although many have read other Wharton titles that are included.

So, we know that Rory Gilmore at least thought about the Roman Empire several times.

How would I do on the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge?

There are 339 books on the quiz list. Some of them are a bit ambiguous and do not represent a specific book. One of books is also spurious as the person who originally put together the list of books from the show included The Gospel According to Judy Blume which does not exist. It was included as the book by Judy Blume, Deenie, was referred to as The Gospel According to Judy Blume in a conversation on the show. Of course this list has also been picked apart and been added to by Gilmore Girls fans, and some updated lists are more than 500 titles long.

The quiz that is frequently shown on YouTube is based on the first list that appeared some time ago.

I have read 178 of the 338 real books on the list for about 52% of the total. This is without specifically reading from the list. Many of the books are on other lists that I read from or are just books that have interested me over the years. For instance, I have read all the Pulitzer prize winners of which there are several on the list.

Steven

p.s. I do not count Gibbons in my total. Perhaps someday.