The man who read 3599 books

Dan Pelzer, who died on July 1 at age 92, is having a viral moment after his relatives shared his 109-page log featuring every single book he finished over more than 60 years

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-man-kept-a-meticulous-list-of-all-3599-books-hed-read-since-1962-when-he-died-his-family-published-it-online-180987074/

https://what-dan-read.com/

NYT did one of their fancy scrolling image articles on it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/books/man-died-book-list-thousands.html

I like it, it's interesting. It does make you feel like you know part of who he is. There's going to be a lot more of these lists in the age of letterboxd and similar sites.

I thought it was a Fall track at first

As they used to say in the 1960s, you are what you eat. ;-)

If I'd started at about age 16, my lifetime list would probably top out at about half that number. I'm rather glad I only started keeping a similar list in my mid-50s so I could contribute to the What Did You Read in... (the past year) threads here on ILB. This way there's less incriminating evidence.

I love that Dan hated Ulysses.

Let’s poll all 3599

NYT did one of their fancy scrolling image articles on it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/books/man-died-book-list-thousands.html

I like it, it's interesting. It does make you feel like you know part of who he is. There's going to be a lot more of these lists in the age of letterboxd and similar sites.

― adamt (abanana), Saturday, August 2, 2025 8:12 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

not 60 year lists.

but what's on his ipod?

the nyt article observes that he was into reading classics in 1999. looks like a lot of the books he read that year were on the modern library 100 greatest novels of the 20th century list that was published in 1998.

Art Garfunkel's website features a list of well over a thousand titles he's read, most recently (as of 2023) E.M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread. I note that he was reading Norman Mailer's book on Marilyn Monroe a few weeks after his girlfriend's suicide.

and he is no closer to understanding why Paul Simon loathes him

He's trying, he read the Hilburn biography!