Stacks Into Stories
Reading was this man’s steady companion. A list of books followed him through jobs, travels, and family life. Each entry added up, leaving behind a legacy as simple as ink on paper.
Detroit Roots
Born on March 19, 1933, in Detroit, Michigan, Dan Pelzer came from humble beginnings as the son of John and Geneva Pelzer. He humorously claimed he graduated from Detroit Catholic Central High School "second from the bottom of his class," yet this unpromising beginning sparked a journey of intellectual curiosity.
Derek Gauci, Wikimedia Commons
Marine Service
The Korean War era brought Pelzer into military service. As a US Marine Corps veteran, he spent three years stationed in London, experiencing cultures beyond his Detroit hometown. Those formative years in uniform instilled discipline that would later define his reading habits.
U.S. Marines USMCFE by Lance Cpl. Christian Salazar, Wikimedia Commons
Educational Journey
Despite joking about his high school ranking, the individual pursued higher education with vigor, earning a Bachelor's Degree in Education and a Master's Degree in Political Science. He completed coursework toward a doctorate, spent eight months as a Jesuit seminarian, and even ran for political office.
Nepal Assignment
Everything changed in 1962. As a Peace Corps volunteer, Pelzer was stationed in Nepal, teaching at Sri Mahendra College in Drahan. After completing his daily teaching responsibilities, he discovered something transformative: the Peace Corps had provided a library of approximately 150 paperbacks for volunteers.
First Book
On the back of a sheet listing Nepalese language translations, Dan recorded his first title: The Blue Nile by Alan Moorehead. This wasn't a social media strategy but simply practical record-keeping. He started logging books in 1962 to remember what he'd already read from the limited Peace Corps library.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
List Begins
What started as casual note-taking evolved into a lifelong practice of documentation. Pelzer kept tracking every book he read from 1962 onward, continuing for over six decades until 2023. It was his private way to remember and reflect on the books that shaped his thinking.
Daily Ritual
He made it his personal goal to read at least 100 pages every single day, a commitment that required extraordinary discipline and time management. By 2006, Pelzer was consuming roughly 80 books annually, which is approximately one book every five days.
Social Worker
From 1970 until his retirement in 2000, the man worked as a social worker for the Ohio Department of Youth Services at the Training Institute of Central Ohio (TICO), a juvenile correctional facility. His reading choices reflected his profession.
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Work And Reading
Throughout the 1980s, he delved into books about adolescent mental health, juvenile delinquency, and theoretical criminology, using literature to understand better the troubled youth he served. Work and reading became intertwined, with each enriching the other throughout his three-decade career.
Library Loyalty
Pelzer was a devoted patron of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, regularly visiting the Livingston (later Barnett) and Whitehall branches. His commitment to public libraries went beyond personal convenience. His son John recalled that Dan would "recoil" at suggestions to buy books, insisting, “I can get that from the library”.
Genre Diversity
His reading list spans almost every genre imaginable: fiction and non-fiction, politics and biographies, dense historical tomes and pulpy page-turners. In the early 1980s, Pelzer tackled all eleven volumes of Will and Ariel Durant's The Story of Civilization series, although he read them in a seemingly random order.
Bill Murphy, Los Angeles Times, Wikimedia Commons
Finishing Pledge
John also revealed that his father vowed to finish every single book he started, no matter how challenging or disappointing it was. "Even the books that were dogs," as the Columbus Dispatch reported, "he would slog through to the final page”.
Recommended Books
If someone recommended a book, he'd read it completely out of respect for their suggestion. His daughter Marci's recommendation, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, became his second-to-last book, showing his commitment extended right until the end.
Favorite Authors
This individual loved "a real page-turner," and John Grisham novels appeared throughout his list across multiple years. Mystery writers captured his heart as he had a particular affinity for Sue Grafton, William X Kienzle, and Robert Ludlum. He was also a big fan of thriller writer Ken Follett.
Worst Read
When asked about James Joyce's notoriously difficult Ulysses, Pelzer didn't mince words. He called the nearly 1,000-page modernist classic “the worst” and “pure torture”. This brutal honesty came during a 2006 Columbus Dispatch interview when he'd already read roughly 3,000 books.
Alex Ehrenzweig, RedAppleJack, Missionary, Wikimedia Commons
Reading Locations
This man read everywhere: in the Peace Corps in Nepal, on his bus commute to work in Columbus, during late-night shifts as a Marriott hotel security guard, and while residents slept at a domestic violence shelter where he volunteered. Books filled every gap in his schedule.
Augustus Binu/ facebook, Wikimedia Commons
Marci’s Birth
It is said that when his daughter, Marci, was born in 1972, he was likely reading A Clockwork Orange or Future Shock while pacing the maternity ward. A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian novel set in a bleak future England, plagued by youth gang violence and moral decay.
Family Influence
Every Saturday morning, the individual took his children to the downtown Columbus library and enrolled them in every summer reading program available. He read aloud to his children when they were young, instilling in them his love of books.
Marriage Devotion
He married Mary Lou Pelzer, and they shared 52 years before she passed away in 2024, just one year before the reader's demise. They were among the first residents at the Villas at St Therese when it opened in 1999.
Eyesight Decline
In 2023, Pelzer’s eyesight began deteriorating. This forced him to stop reading. His last entry came on December 30, 2023. For someone who has read at least 100 pages daily since 1962, this loss must have felt like losing a vital sense.
Final Entry
Well, Pelzer’s last recorded book was Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. The poignancy wasn't lost on those who knew him. A friend sent his son, John, a quote from that final book: "Never be mean in anything. Never be false, never be cruel," saying it perfectly captured Dan's character.
William Powell Frith, Wikimedia Commons
Family Discovery
When going through his belongings after his death on July 1, 2025, at age 92, his daughter Marci rediscovered the iconic lists he'd kept for so long. The yellowed pages, some handwritten and others typed, represented more than book titles. Marci initially wanted to print copies for the funeral guests.
Website Creation
With help from her godson, Peter Campanelli, she created what-dan-read.com, uploading scanned images of her father's original handwritten and typed pages. Campanelli thought “maybe a couple hundred people would see it”. The site showcased every page chronologically from 1962 through 2023.
TikTok Explosion
Columbus Metropolitan Library posted a TikTok video about Pelzer’s story that exploded, garnering nearly 2 million views. Digital storytelling specialist Grayson Kelly admitted, “We knew it would be a compelling story for at least some people, but it took a while to realize the breadth of the story”.
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