Dan Pelzer left behind a handwritten reading list of 3,599 books when he died in July. His family originally wanted to hand out printed copies of the list at his funeral, but each copy would have been more than 100 pages long.
So they created a website and uploaded scans of Pelzer’s list. The site went viral, and the Whitehill branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library — where he was one of the most loyal patrons — got involved.
The library turned Pelzer’s list into a searchable PDF available on their website and set up displays of some of Pelzer’s picks. Most of the books he catalogued were borrowed from the Whitehall branch.
Pelzer’s list spans genres, and his son John Pelzer said he vowed to finish every book he started. But, John Pelzer said, his father had an affinity for mystery novels and loved books by Sue Grafton, William X. Kienzle and Robert Ludlum.
Dan Pelzer started the list to keep track of his reading in 1962 when he was in the Peace Corps in Nepal, but his family didn’t become aware of the list until the early 2000s when they saw him writing in it.
In 2020, John Pelzer said his mother was moved to an assisted living facility, and most of Dan Pelzer’s time was spent visiting and caring for her.
“They would eat Bullseye candies and Pepsi and talk about life,” John Pelzer said, “and then he would go back to his apartment and read the remainder of the day.”
Dan Pelzer’s last entry, “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens, was on Dec. 30, 2023.
“I had a friend reach out to me when they saw this, that that was the last book, and they sent me a quote from ‘David Copperfield’ that said, ‘Never be mean in anything. Never be false, never be cruel,’” John Pelzer said. “They were like, ‘What just typifies to me who your dad was.’”
John Pelzer said that Dan Pelzer started losing his eyesight in 2023 and had to stop reading. Still, Dan Pelzer’s love for books and his library was lifelong.
“He would always sort of recoil if you spoke of potentially buying him a book,” John Pelzer said. “He would say, ‘John, I can get that from the library.’”
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Ashley Locke produced this interview for broadcast with Micaela Rodríguez. Grace Griffin produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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