He did not enjoy the nearly 1,000-page “Ulysses” by James Joyce, nor L. Ron Hubbard’s “Mission Earth,” a 10-volume science fiction series published in the 1980s. But once Dan Pelzer set his mind on reading something, he did not put it down until he was finished.
That’s how Mr. Pelzer’s children said he was able to read 3,599 books from 1962, when he first began jotting his reads down on his language class work sheets while stationed in Nepal with the Peace Corps, to 2023, when his eyesight failed him and he could no longer read.
Mr. Pelzer died at 92 on July 1 in Columbus, Ohio, where he had lived for five decades. At the funeral, his daughter, Marci Pelzer, wanted to hand out his reading list to friends and family. But at more than 100 pages, it was not practical to print physical copies. So Ms. Pelzer, 52, had her godson create a website, what-dan-read.com, which guests could access through a QR code on the back of the funeral 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,” Ms. Pelzer said.
“I remember the conversations that we had about books that we both loved,” said Ms. Pelzer. “He loved reading about religion. He loved memoirs. He loved novels.”
In an interview, Ms. Pelzer traced her life through the books they discussed.
When she and her brother John were young, Mr. Pelzer read them “Watership Down,” an epic tale of a band of rabbits. He also fawned over their pet rabbit, whom he named Rabbitski.
When Ms. Pelzer was in high school, her father spoke often about George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” she recalled.
And he kept up with the times. Bill Gates’s 2021 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” convinced him to begin a vegan diet in the final years of his life, Ms. Pelzer said.
At one point, he was reading about 80 books a year, he told The Columbus Dispatch in 2006.
The only constant was that most of the books came from the public library — more specifically, the Whitehall Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library.
The library wrote a Facebook post to honor Mr. Pelzer on Monday and linked to the website with his reading list. In more than 1,000 comments, the library’s fans (and employees) remembered him fondly.
“He was a wonderful man,” one woman wrote. “So kind. Always had a list of books for us to reserve for him here at Whitehall. He will be missed.”
Lauren Hagan, the chief executive of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, said in an interview that a team of about six people at the library were digitizing Mr. Pelzer’s list so that it could be used by other patrons.
At the Whitehall branch, she added, librarians are planning a display that will highlight some of his eclectic picks.
“That’s just scratching the surface of how we celebrate a customer like Dan,” Ms. Hagan said.
Missing from Mr. Pelzer’s list of books was the Bible, even though he had read it about a dozen times, his son said. Mr. Pelzer was a devout Catholic who left the Jesuit seminary for the Peace Corps.
“My friends from high school would always laugh,” John Pelzer, 51, recalled. When they visited, “he would always be reading in our basement, typically the Bible, and he would be drinking a 40-ounce malt liquor — typically, Olde English.”
If it was a contradiction, Mr. Pelzer’s life may have been full of them.
“He was an enigma wrapped in a riddle,” the younger Mr. Pelzer said.
The elder Mr. Pelzer, who was born and raised in Detroit, had a rough childhood — he told his children that his father had been an alcoholic, and that he graduated second from the bottom of his class at Detroit Central Catholic High School. He was the first in his family to go to college, and then he enlisted in the Marine Corps.
But he also knocked on doors for Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign in 1984, his son said, and was a lifelong liberal, though his children said he had friends with an array of political views. When his eyesight failed him at the end of 2023, he turned to cable news.
“The only things he asked for in the last year of his life were a soap dish, a watch battery and MSNBC,” Ms. Pelzer said.
His favorite cocktail was a Manhattan — so much so that Ms. Pelzer created a custom “Danhattan” cocktail for guests at his lunchtime funeral.
He was an even-keeled man who never got worked up, his son recalled, with one exception.
Mr. Peltzer said “the one time I ever saw him excited” was when the Columbus-born boxer James Buster Douglas beat Mike Tyson in a 1990 match that was a huge upset. (A friend of Mr. Pelzer, who also happened to be Mr. Douglas’s manager, had convinced him to put money on his fighter.)
He was close with his children, gave amusing nicknames to his grandchildren and doted on his nieces and nephews, his children said. After his wife, Mary Lou, had a stroke in 2020 and moved into a nursing home within their retirement community, he went to visit her every day.
“He would walk down every day,” his son Mr. Pelzer said, “then spend the rest of his days, as he did a good chunk of his life, reading books.”
After his wife died in April 2024, Mr. Pelzer’s health began to deteriorate, his children said. He spent Memorial Day this year at the Columbus Zoo and took his young granddaughters to get pedicures. The next day, he collapsed, and then spent June in and out of the hospital.
When he died this month, his children wrote a suggestion to loved ones in his obituary: In lieu of sending flowers, they could donate to a local food center. Or, perhaps the ultimate homage to their father: Honor him by reading “a real page-turner.”
A Selection From Dan’s Reading List
Ulysses by James Joyce
Mr. Pelzer agreed with many readers of this modernist novel that it was “pure torture” — but he finished it. (Read our review.)
Animal Farm by George Orwell
A classic Mr. Pelzer talked about often. He found the satire a compelling critique of society, Ms. Pelzer said. (Read our review.)
All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
“A real page-turner,” Ms. Pelzer called the story of Watergate, so she thinks her Dad probably loved it. He was reading it around the time her brother, John, was born. (Read our review.)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The novel he was reading when his first child, his daughter, Marci, was born, according to a 2006 article in The Columbus Dispatch for which he was interviewed about his list.
The Associate by John Grisham
Grisham is all over Mr. Pelzer’s list — this was the last novel from the prolific author of courtroom thrillers that Dan read. (Read our review.)
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
This bildungsroman that follows a man from infancy to adulthood was the last book Mr. Pelzer ever read.
My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand
Mr. Pelzer enjoyed memoirs but told his daughter this was “just ok,” which surprised her. “I thought he’d like that more.” (Read our review.)
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
On the other hand, Mr. Pelzer thought this Nickelodeon star’s popular memoir was “a smart book,” and he “was impressed with her resilience,” Ms. Pelzer said. (Read our review.)
Watership Down by Richard Adams
He read this epic tale following a band of rabbits to his children when they were young. (This was before the days of “Harry Potter,” Ms. Pelzer joked.) (Read our review.)
The Power Broker by Robert Caro
When his daughter finally read this more than 1,000-page biography of a New York City bureaucrat, she asked her father what he thought. He told her he had never read it. But it’s on the list — one of several she supposed he had forgotten reading. (Read our review.)
Light in August by William Faulkner
Another one Mr. Pelzer forgot that he read, but he seemed to have caught himself. It’s on his list for 2003 but is crossed out, probably because he realized it was on his list in 1999, Ms. Pelzer said. (Read our review.)
Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss
Mr. Pelzer loved Mr. Maraniss’s historical tomes and he loved this former president — his daughter said he voted for Mr. Obama twice. (Read our review.)
Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
In the 1980s, Mr. Pelzer worked a second job at a bar called Tulips in a hotel in Columbus, Ohio. He read this collection of short stories in between kicking out misbehaving patrons.
“All of the sudden I would be in the South Pacific,” Mr. Pelzer told the author of the 2006 article.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
This 2021 book from the Microsoft co-founder turned Mr. Pelzer on to veganism in his late 80s. (Read our review.)
For more titles, go to what-dan-read.com.
Aishvarya Kavi works in the Washington bureau of The Times, helping to cover a variety of political and national news.
The post He Read (at Least) 3,599 Books in His Lifetime. Now Anyone Can See His List. appeared first on New York Times.
