MAN WHO READ 3599 BOOK HIS ENTIRE LIFE KEPT RECORD OF OVER 100 PAGES OF EACH ONE HE READ
In his lifetime, Dan Pelzer read at least 3,599 volumes before passing away in July 2025 at the age of 92. That statistic is completely true, even though it may appear to be exaggerated. While serving with the Peace Corps in Nepal in 1962, Pelzer started recording his reading on language class worksheets long before Goodreads existed. He painstakingly recorded every book he read for more than 60 years until 2023, when his vision started to fail. Thanks to his daughter, Marci Pelzer and her godson, anyone can now browse Pelzer's vast reading catalogue online.
Marci initially intended to hand out her father's list at his funeral in Columbus, Ohio, but she soon realised it was not possible because it was over 100 pages long. In the end, she and her godson developed a website for visitors, what-dan-read.com, which could be accessed using a QR code on the back of the funeral program.
Marci explained to The New York Times, “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."
However, it wasn't until July 21 that the Columbus Metropolitan Library posted Pelzer's list on their Facebook site that it really took off. Throughout Pelzer's life, Marci emphasised the importance of the local library. Pelzer frequented the Livingston and later Whitehall branches until he lost the ability to read.
Marci clarified that all of his books were from the Columbus Metropolitan Library. Dan was the person who loved the library the most. He signed us up for every summer reading program and took us to the downtown library every Saturday morning when we were young.
From courtroom dramas and memoirs to classics and bildungsromans, Pelzer's reading collection is impressively diverse. He read publications like Ralph A. Weisheit's Juvenile Delinquency and George B. Vold's Theoretical Criminology during the 1980s while he researched the mental health of teenagers and young adults. These titles were probably used as resources when Pelzer was employed as a social worker in an Ohio juvenile correctional facility, Marci said.
In an interview with CBC Radio's As It Happens, Marci stated, "We know he was reading at work sometimes." However, he read everywhere he went, including on the bus. A book was always open and in his hand. Additionally, it sparked fascinating discussions with a wide range of individuals.
His reading collection goes beyond nonfiction and includes literary classics like The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, and Animal Farm by George Orwell. Politically charged titles like Ezra Klein's Why We're Polarised and Rodney Clapp's Naming Neoliberalism were dotted with contemporary memoirs like Jennette McCurdy's I'm Glad My Mom Died (2022) and Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House (2019). He would read almost 100 volumes in some years.
Religion is another recurring theme in Pelzer's list. According to his son, John Pelzer, he was a devoted Catholic who had read the Bible roughly a dozen times, albeit this was not on his list.
In our basement, John remembers, "he would always be reading something, usually the Bible, and he would be drinking a 40-ounce malt liquor, usually Olde English."
Pelzer would eventually read and add the novels he detested to his collection. In fact, he finished James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses despite calling it "pure pain" in a 2006 interview with the Columbus Dispatch. The story claims that "he would plough through to the final page, even the books that were dogs."
Like Ulysses, Pelzer's last book on his list was a classic, but maybe easier to read: Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. In contrast, Gabrielle Zevin's 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, his penultimate work, was published more recently and centres on two video game designers.
You can see all the books Dan Pelzer read by viewing his posthumous site here. What Dan Read