For those that asked, we have 7 floor-ceiling bookshelves in the house. So the overflow is stacked on the piano, desks, coffee tables… Making those surfaces unusable. Up until a year ago he did have them organized in some way but now there are so many different piles I don’t think he could find a book if he wanted to! I thank everyone for the suggestions and most especially for the understanding. If it was something other than books I would call it hoarding 
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Book clutter is bliss! Sorry (not sorry!)
In my office I also have (research) paper clutter.
The only downside for me is dust. They do collect a lot of dust.
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The thing is, there is a way to have both - all the books you want and still be able to play your piano, set your coffee down next to you on the end table, etc.
I’m convinced that clutter-makers cannot understand clutter-avoiders.
As someone who works with books/literacy daily, I appreciate all the book love. That said, sometimes too much of a good thing is NOT a good thing if you don’t even know what you have - having 3 copies of the same book (unless the editions are really different) means that 2 other people could be owning and reading that book besides you and your copy!
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This would drive me bonkers! We have a ton of books too but they are all in bookcases. Piles cluttering up spaces like you described would be a deal breaker.
I’d give my H a month to organize and purge and then start donating anything not in a book case.
PS. Our problem spot is H’s office but he just agreed to a reorg during Xmas time. It looks amazing! I hope it stays that way as it’s the first room you see walking up the stairs and the door is always open.
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We are huge readers in our house, as well. I have a fairly sizable book collection myself as do my kids but I also am big on everything having a place. This is what we have done to get it under control (both space-wise AND financially…we still spend a lot on books but it would be a lot more if we didn’t actively control it):
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Everyone has a Kindle and the Libby app on their phone so we can borrow as much from the library as possible. We only travel with Kindles now to save on packing space and have grown to enjoy reading on them even though it wasn’t our top choice to begin with.
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We borrow from the public library and school libraries as much as possible. Sometimes my kids will still purchase their favorites but they tend to first read through the library before deciding whether to purchase.
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Maximize storage options and add bookcases wherever possible, but only to the point that it does not look overcrowded or take away from the decor look you are going for. We have a huge wall to wall bookcase in our master bedroom, more bookcases in the living room and the home office, and then upstairs we have a dedicated reading nook with a wall of bookcases, and then the kids have their own bookcases in their bedrooms. I think all of the storage we have looks tastefully done and doesn’t overcrowd the space, but I purposefully have not expanded beyond this so that it sets some limits on how much our collection can grow.
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Organize by topic/category and then alphabetically by author. We have groupings of fiction, poetry, travel, language, biology, education, politics, biography, graphic novels, and on and on, and then we organize alphabetically in whatever way makes sense from there. We can always find what we are looking for and it makes re-reading much easier.
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Only keep the books you have room for on the shelves. Other than a small to read stack next to our beds, we don’t leave books lying around and find a place on the shelves for them as soon as we are done reading. If we run out of space, we donate or pass on to friends and make room for new books.
All of the above would require your husband’s cooperation, but it’s a workable system if you can get him on board!
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Not asking anyone to share anything they are not comfortable with, but I would love seeing an example of anyone’s book storage places in their home!
Also adding in that Pinterest is a treasure trove of images of home library spaces that can really be inspiring.
I would love a room something like this - book storage, maybe a comfy chair and ottoman to the side for reading but most of all the table in the middle that can act as desk, activity table, extra dining, conference/meeting table, etc.
Organized but versatile.
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I recently helped a friend pack her home for a move across country. She and her husband were avid readers. There were books everywhere…and I mean everywhere. They had take a room in their lower level and finished it as a library with floor to ceiling bookshelves on all four walls…except where the entry door was. Thousands and thousands of books. And they were stacked two deep on the bookshelves.
She did have a book expert come in, just in case there was anything valuable to sell. He took maybe 100 books. That left many thousands still to get rid of.
We called local libraries, and other places that take books as donations. We would have had to haul the lot to anyone IF they wanted them…and they didn’t.
She has a couple of tag sales and the books were offered for free. I don’t think 20 went that way.
So…at the end (you book lovers are going to die) most were take to the landfill…it const a fortune because it took more than several trips there. The person doing that had to schlep the books to his truck, and then empty. It was a ton of work.
I guess what I’m saying is…keep a number of books that are important to you, for whatever reason. But IMHO keeping everything you read burdens someone else with getting rid of them someday.
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I would also love a home library room! When my D eventually takes the grand piano I’ll have a whole section of my living room where we could create a library nook. We already have some built ins in that room but it’s a combo of books and decorative items. The main bookcases are in the office and family room but they are a mishmash. I also have big baskets full of books in the guest room and over on a long bench in the living room.
We just had one custom bookcase made for a newly finished spot in the basement. It hasn’t been filled in yet though but here it is:
Games are going below and books on top.
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You have my sympathy for the clutter for sure! Books can creep everywhere if not regularly controlled. Reading your post now, I am wondering when he retired. If he used to have them organized, did the problem start after retirement? I ask because I have dealt more than once with a spouse who was suddenly without a contract and at home, and I have seen the changes that such a change can cause in people (to be honest, especially in men, sorry). I wonder if rather than talking to him about the books specifically, you might want to ask about the adjustment to retirement or his feelings about what his role is now.
(Disclaimer, I do not know y’all, so that could be totally off the mark, but the timeline suggested to me that there could be a connection.)
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We also have it seems hundreds of books from my kids and school. At least three of several titles… To Kill a Mockingbird, Hamlet, etc.. I need to clean out the shelves once our last one goes to college. Where can I donate the books? Most are paperbacks…
I would suggest to give your H a room (call it library) and let him do what he wants. He can make it very neat and decorative or he could just have stacks of books only he could find. I wouldn’t clean it or de-clutter it for him.
He could take few books out to other parts of the house, but he is required to put them back in his room when he is done.
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Having an amount of items that overrun living space (OP says surfaces are unusuable due to book stacks) , and do not have an anticipated use (multiple copies of the same book) that a person will not relinquish (he has resisted all attempts to donate or dilute his stash) is the very definition of hoarding. It doesn’t matter if they are books,or not.
We are in the midst of dealing with an estate that involved hoarding books. Two used book dealers took 30 boxes EACH of books (which we had to sort and get out of the house, mind you). We sold a hundred or so at a yard sale for $1/each.
The other 500-600 were thrown in a dumpster. Dealers can’t store inventory like that, Goodwill can’t either, nobody has the time to sell blind boxes on eBay for cheap. Too much is too much. I say this as a librarian and someone who has a library like in the photos. I love me my books, but once a year we give enough away to make space.
Give him X amount of shelf space. Start throwing out the extracopies, first, once that designated space is full. And consult mental health help/hoarding sites /marriage counselor before it gets to a stage where the hoarding spreads to other things.
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I have to make a comment. Every household/relationship is different. And maybe this is not good and will cause people to 
, but just because I tell or ask H how I would like something at home (a certain space), doesn’t mean he is going to agree or “give in” and make it as I’d like. He’s not my child and it’s not my stuff so I have limited ability to make a change if he doesn’t go for it.
I would also never/rarely make it my liberty to get rid of someone else’s stuff.
I maybe envy those of you who CAN say “this way or the highway”! 
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agreed – not a child, not their stuff — but it is a shared space, and compromises are often ignored and that’s how ultimatums happen. The first step is always to be specific about the problem at hand (women – me too— often are unwilling to be direct and specific,instead hoping partners will take a hint)
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Books are almost completely recyclable. That’s a shame they went to the landfill.
I volunteer at my local library and help out with the weeding out of books they don’t need. There is an organization that works with libraries that sends them to either be reused elsewhere in other libraries (maybe prison books programs) or recycled and pulped if they are too old and undesirable.
Old books can go to creative re-use centers where artists use them too.
Lots of options for unwanted books besides the landfill.
I like the idea of putting all his piles in one room for him to deal with. That’s what I do with my teenager when she leaves stuff around the main living areas of the house.
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While it sounds like “my way or highway,” it not as simple as it might sound in our house. The solutions to clutter we came to are mutual. My husband realizes that he has an issue with keeping piles of old work-related papers (thinking something like what if he needs to look up that procedure from 1965 JACS that he has not used since grad school?). If given complete freedom, he would cover every flat surface in our house with piles of papers. If he doesn’t claim ownership of a paper when asked about it, it gets shredded or recycled.
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There are many options BUT a proactive attitude would be for many people to NOT pass this problem onto loved ones or otherwise who will need to deal with the stacks of sometimes old, mildewed, outdated, books left in an estate or otherwise.
Sometimes the time and energy and $$$ figuring out a home for every book to be used or recycled just isn’t feasible. I also volunteer for a local used book center and even with well publicized guidelines people just want to unload bags and boxes of books from grandma’s basement where they have been for decades and quickly get them out of their sight/responsibility. It’s passing the book buck. It was costing our non-profit so, so, so much $$$ and time to even get these books to a recycling center that would take them in a town 30 minutes away.
Save the book lives you can. But all cannot be saved!
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Part of being a grown up is to respect how other people want to live, especially when it comes to one’s partner. Some sort of compromise is needed.
“You can’t only have 30 books in the house” is probably unreasonable. “This is your space, you can do what you want. This is our common place and I would like it not be cluttered with your books.” is reasonable in my view.
This is no different than if you have a roommate who likes to leave their underwear, towels, dirty shoes all over the house. Just because it is what they prefer, it doesn’t make it right for him/her to impose on you.
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I do have a library room in my home. It’s a major reason I bought the house. Still, I clean out books from time to time to take to a used book store.
I tend to eliminate novels. I almost never read a novel twice, unless it is a true classic. Histories and reference books I keep; same for art books, pictorial travel books, etc. This is my method to keep from drowning in too many books.
Same could be said for anything in an estate and it is something I am slowly trying to deal with myself.
We didn’t throw away any of my parents books. I hated that idea. I donated a bunch including the 1969 World Book Encyclopedia set which the creative re-use center was thrilled to have.
Some people love to be surrounded by books. Fran Leibowitz has 10,000.
You own 10,000 books. What’s it like to live with them?
Oh, it’s delightful. I think I have 12,000 books now. I can think of no better company. The best way to live is by yourself and with 12,000 books. Okay? I don’t have bookshelves. I have roughly 18 or 20 bookcases that I bought over the course of many years. Since I own mostly 19th-century American furniture, I have a vast array of 19th-century bookcases—all my bookcases have glass doors. I would never buy a bookcase without glass doors because this is New York City and dust eats books. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to pay for a dusting staff, which is what you need. If I’m walking down the street and I see a bookcase in someone’s apartment, I think, What a great apartment.
Why is it so difficult for you to throw out books, even when they’re bad?
I have never thrown out a book; to me, a book is very close to a human being. You have no idea how much time I’ve spent thinking about having books I do not want. Many books come to me unbidden by publishers. I’m at a point in my life, where I ask myself: “Do I like this book so much that I want to keep this book?” With some books, I recommend them to my friends and give them the book. Some, when they add up and I don’t want them in my house, and there isn’t a pandemic, and there’s a few hundred of them, I sell them to the Strand, who comes and picks them up. Every time I see books in a trash can, it breaks my heart.
Too many for me probably and definitely too many for my husband, but books don’t bother me the way some other clutter does.
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