My husband said he’d ‘build another bookshelf’. It was the sexiest thing he ever said

February 21, 2026 — 1:30pm

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When I first arrived at the local Rotary Book Fair, I felt the giddy thrill usually reserved for Millennials going to a bespoke plant nursery on payday.

Like houseplants, books are generally considered non-essential items, but no one would accuse someone of “hoarding plants”.

I wandered down the long tables packed with an endless horizon of titles, organised neatly into categories: fiction, business, biography, James Patterson. My eyes would land on a book I’ve read and loved, and I’d be filled with the warmth of recognising an old friend, like Ian McEwan’s Atonement. Should I rescue it?

I started filling a large bag with books from authors I enjoy, or titles I could vaguely recall were recommended by a snooty literary blog. I grabbed Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, ironically, given that my heaving bookshelves would not be able to accommodate this........

© The Age