Man Kept List of All 3,599 Books He’d Read Since 1962
- Editor OGN Daily
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
Dan Pelzer, who recently passed away, is having a viral moment after his relatives shared his 109-page log featuring every single book he finished over more than 60 years.
By the time Pelzer died on 1 July at age 92, he had meticulously logged 3,599 books that he’d read between 1962 and 2023, the year his eyesight deteriorated, says the New York Times. So, in preparation for his funeral, his daughter decided to create a website listing all the books - 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 that What Dan Read started going viral.
At Pelzer’s most frequented library in his lifetime, they have 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.
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.
Looking for some reading inspiration? Check out Dan's hand-written list on what-dan-read.com