The man left behind a huge list of the books he’d ever read, totally almost 3,600 in his life, and he referred to one as the ‘worst’ saying it was ‘pure torture’ to get to the end
Finding time to read can be quite difficult because other things may take priority – but for one man, reading was his whole life. On social media[1], @drawntobooks shared that one man, named Dan Pelzer, had “thousands of books[2] on his reading list,” and there was “one that he called the worst”. He even went as far as to refer to it as “pure torture”.
When Dan sadly died, “he left his family an incredible gift,” which was a “60-year archive[3] of his reading life”. In 1962, Dan was “in the Peace Corps in Nepal, and he began to read his way through the little volunteer library of 150 books”.
But “when he got back, he just kept going,” and continued to read all the books on his list.
“He read everything from classics, to memoirs, to John Grisham, jotting down the titles as he finished each one,” she explained, much like someone would log their reading progress on Goodreads, or StoryGraph. Or, perhaps they would prefer to use a physical reading journal.
In the “many years” he was reading for, he was able to rack up over 80 books per year, which made him an extremely prolific reader.
What’s more, he got “almost all of them from his local library,” so he didn’t spend much on them either, which is a bonus.
At the end of his life, he left behind a 109 page list, with over 3,599 entries, and he “finished every single book” that he started, even if he didn’t like it.
One book he wasn’t a fan of was Ulysses, by James Joyce, which was published in 1920. Dense and lengthy, the novel tells the story of how three people, Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and Molly Bloom, experience the same day in Dublin, June 16, 1904.
The modernist novel was actually banned upon publication, including in the UK, because the content was deemed to be “obscene”. The ban in the UK was eventually lifted in 1936.
He referred to it as “the worst” and “pure torture,” so it’s safe to say that he wasn’t a fan of the novel.
In the comments, someone wrote: “So what you’re saying is that he basically wrote an entire book about all of the books he had read”.
Another said he’d “basically created his own Goodreads” before the platform existed.
A woman penned: “I found a book that he read on my birthday, and now I’m reading it myself! It’s a unique feeling to know that this man was finishing this book on that exact day, maybe even at the same time. The book is The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann”.
Someone shared: “My local library shows how much money you’ve saved since using the library instead of buying books. They show it on your print out due slip. Boy I wish we’d seen his haha”.
Somebody shared a sweet tribute, writing: “I’m so sorry for him. May he rest in peace. He will be missed. He was loved by everyone who knew him. Fly high”.