“Website Established for a 100-Page Compilation of 3,599 Books Read by an Individual Chronicling His Reading Journey Throughout His Life”
By the time Dan Pelzer passed away at the age of 92 in July 2025, he had perused at least 3,599 books during his lifetime. That figure might appear so exact it borders on exaggeration—and yet it is entirely true. In 1962, well before Goodreads came into existence, Pelzer started documenting his reading on his language class worksheets while serving in Nepal with the Peace Corps. For more than sixty years, he meticulously recorded every single book he read until 2023, when his vision started declining. Today, Pelzer’s extensive reading catalog can be explored online, thanks to his daughter, Marci Pelzer, and her godson.
Initially, Marci intended to share her father’s list during his funeral in Columbus, Ohio, but realizing it totaled over 100 pages, she quickly understood that would not be practical. She and her godson ultimately established a website, what-dan-read.com, for attendees, accessible via a QR code printed on the back of the funeral program.
“I thought it would be wonderful to provide the people he cared about with the list as they left the funeral,” Marci stated to The New York Times.
However, Pelzer’s list only gained significant attention after the Columbus Metropolitan Library posted about it on their Facebook page on July 21. In the announcement, Marci underscored the library’s importance in Pelzer’s life, noting that he frequently visited the Livingston and, later, Whitehall branches until he could no longer read.
“Every book he owned came from the Columbus Metropolitan Library,” Marci pointed out. “No one cherished the library more than Dan. When we were young, he took us to the downtown library every Saturday morning and signed us up for every summer reading initiative.”
Pelzer’s reading list is exceptionally diverse, encompassing a wide range of genres from classics and coming-of-age novels to legal dramas and autobiographies. During the 1980s, he explored adolescent mental health, reading titles such as Juvenile Delinquency by Ralph A. Weisheit and Theoretical Criminology by George B. Vold. As Marci indicated, these books likely served as valuable references while Pelzer worked as a social worker in a juvenile correctional facility in Ohio.
“We know he sometimes read during work,” Marci shared in an interview for CBC Radio’s As It Happens. “But he also read on the bus and anytime he was out. He always had a book open and in hand. And it sparked fascinating discussions with all sorts of people.”
His reading list includes not only nonfiction but also acclaimed literary works like George Orwell’s Animal Farm, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Modern memoirs such as Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022) and Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House (2019) were intermingled with politically themed titles, including Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein and Naming Neoliberalism by Rodney Clapp. In some years, he would read close to 100 books.
Another consistent motif throughout Pelzer’s list is religion. He was a devoted Catholic and, although not part of his recorded list, he had read the Bible around a dozen times, according to his son, John Pelzer.
“He would often be reading in our basement, usually the Bible, while sipping on a 40-ounce malt liquor—typically Olde English,” John recalls.
Even the books Pelzer disliked found their way onto his list. He famously stated that James Joyce’s modernist work Ulysses was “pure torture” in a 2006 interview with the Columbus Dispatch—yet, he managed to complete it. “Even the books that were dreadful,” the article states, “he would trudge through to the last page.”
The last book on Pelzer’s list was, like Ulysses, a classic, but perhaps more enjoyable: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. His second-to-last book, however, was more contemporary: Gabrielle Zevin’s 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which centers on two video game creators.
To explore Dan Pelzer’s reading list for yourself, go to what-dan-read.com.