What Dad Read

By the time Dan Pelzer died last year at the age of 92, he'd accomplished many admirable things. Over the decades, he'd worked as a Marine, a Peace Corp volunteer in Nepal, a seminary student, a passionate campaigner for Jesse Jackson's presidential run in the 80s, a security guard, and as a beloved social worker for incarcerated juvenile delinquents in Columbus, Ohio. Dan was a loving husband to his wife of 52 years, Mary Lou, a hands-on father to their kids Marci and John and his grandchildren, and an engaged member of the community, where he regularly volunteered to feed the hungry. A life well lived by all accounts.

But there was something else notable about Dan's life: between the years pf 1962 and 2023, he kept a handwritten record of every book he read, stopping at the very end of that year, a list totaling 3,599 titles of every possible genre, from the pop science classic Rats, Lice and History (1935), to contemporary memoirs by Sinead O'Connor and Jennette McCurdy, and every novel by his beloved John Grisham since A Time to Kill.  

On this episode, Dan's daughter Marci reminisces with Erin about reading Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow with her father, finding the full list after his death, the surprises therein, and what she's learned from strangers about her dad's life since sharing the list with the world. You can see a digital copy here at Dan's exclusive literary destination, the Columbus Metropolitan Library. And the original handwritten list via What-Dan-Read.com.