Man Kept a Meticulous List of All 3,599 Books He'd Read Since 1962

Dan Pelzer, who died on July 1 at age 92, is having a viral moment after his relatives shared his 109-page log featuring every single book he finished over more than 60 years

When Dan Pelzer died on July 1, he had logged 3,599 books that he’d completed between 1962 and 2023. Columbus Metropolitan Library

There was no Goodreads in 1962, the year Dan Pelzer spent making his way through the library of paperbacks set aside for Peace Corps volunteers in Nepal. He started keeping track of everything he read using a pen and paper.

By the time Pelzer died on July 1 at age 92, he had logged 3,599 books that he’d read between 1962 and 2023, the year his eyesight deteriorated, as the New York Times’ Aishvarya Kavi reports. Now, those reading logs are available to the public on what-dan-read.com, a website created by Pelzer’s daughter with the help of her godson.

The website was initially created for Pelzer’s funeral, available to guests through a QR code on the back of the program.

“I just thought it’d be so cool to give people who cared, who he cared about—to send them away from the funeral with the list,” his daughter, Marci Pelzer, tells the Times.

Then, she shared the list on LinkedIn, calling it her family’s “most precious inheritance,” and it started to gain visibility. But it wasn’t until the Columbus Metropolitan Library decided to share Pelzer’s story on its Facebook page on July 21 that What Dan Read started going viral, Marci Pelzer tells Stacia Naquin of WBNS-TV, a station in Columbus, Ohio.

“I just keep thinking about how crazy it is that we’ve spread the list to so many people,” she adds.

Marci Pelzer’s note to the Columbus Metropolitan Library about her father’s list detailed how he would take his children to the library every Saturday morning. “Nobody loved the library more than Dan,” she wrote. “I’m sure he would be among your highest-circulation and longest-term borrowers.” She also disclosed that, in her father’s obituary, her family asked people to read “a real page turner” in his honor in lieu of flowers.

At Pelzer’s most frequented branch in his lifetime, the library has set up a display featuring a sample of the thousands of books he read, from Capital in the Twenty-First Century, economist Thomas Piketty’s examination of wealth and income inequality, to novels like Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain.

Pelzer’s list doesn’t include the books he read prior to 1962. It also doesn’t include the Bible, which Pelzer read about a dozen times, as his son John Pelzer tells the Times. But it does shed light on who the Columbus man was.

In the 1980s, Pelzer’s lists featured several books about the mental health of teenagers, which were likely connected to his job as a social worker at a juvenile correctional facility, his daughter tells the Times. His son adds that he was a lifelong liberal and read a number of books about politics. Pelzer’s lists also feature books about religion and memoirs, such as Jennette McCurdy’s 2022 book I’m Glad My Mom Died.

“We know he was sometimes reading at work,” Marci Pelzer explains to Paul Hunter of CBC Radio’s “As It Happens.” “But he also read on the bus and everywhere he went. He always had a book open, a book in his hand. And it stimulated great conversations with all kinds of people."

The last book on Pelzer’s list was a classic: Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. But the avid reader kept up with contemporary fiction, too. His penultimate book was Gabrielle Zevin’s 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a novel about a pair of video game designers.

This isn’t the first time Pelzer’s reading logs have earned him media attention, according to What Dan Read. The website features a copy of a 2006 article by the Columbus Dispatch’s Mike Harden, which details how Pelzer was making his way through roughly 80 books a year. He had recently read James Joyce’s Ulysses, and he wasn’t afraid to tell the journalist what he really thought. “The worst,” he said. “Pure torture.”

Still, Pelzer finished reading the nearly 1,000-page classic, because he finished reading every book he started. “Even the books that were dogs,” wrote the Columbus Dispatch, “he would slog through to the final page.”

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