- Melissa Boyes, 48, is an avid book lover and has 5000 novels
- She moved all of them into a shed on her property
- The shed was transformed into an oasis for those who love a good tome
Here Melissa shares her story in her own words.
Peeling open the pages of the Emily Brontë novel, I took in the familiar old book smell. The feeling of the paper against my fingers was almost as delicious as the gothic romance.
I was in my happy place, my Book Temple – a space we’d fixed up for my 5000 books. Mostly thrifted, they had been stored in our home, in Huon Creek, Vic.
Back in 2020, they were on bookshelves on all the walls of the house.
‘No more, Melissa! The house is going to collapse,’ my husband Lachlan, then 40, chortled.
‘We’ll just have to get more shelves!’ I winked.
But my hubby had a point. There wasn’t room for any more books!
‘I moved my books to their new shelves.’
An avid reader since I was a child, I’d lose myself in fairytales. Growing up, my passion for storytelling became my career. I began teaching literature and creative writing at university, and started studying for my PhD in 2016.
In 2020, I was in my last year of my course and was writing a book called Cellophane – a novel about growing up in Australia – as well as a thesis.
I really could use some space to work, I thought, thinking of our full house – with my daughter Rosie, then 15, Lachlan’s son Oscar, 16, and our fox terrier Moxie.
Just 200 metres from our house was an old shed filled with hay – and snakes! The property used to be a tobacco farm in the 1920s, and the shed was used for drying the tobacco.
When my grandparents bought the farm in the ’70s, they used the shed to store hay for the cows.
Now, I had an idea.
‘I’ll move the books into the shed and use the space to finish my studies,’ I beamed at Lachlan.
‘Great,’ he said, thrilled at the idea.
We hired builders to re-do the roof and replace the dirt flooring with concrete. Then they put panes of glass in the old windows.
With delays, the renos took two years, so I actually finished my PhD at our house after all!
Once the shed’s facelift was finished, I moved my books to their new shelves.
‘It’s my shrine to literature.’
One side is dedicated to fiction, kept in alphabetical order by author. And the other side is non-fiction, categorised by subject.
‘It’s incredible!’ Lachlan beamed.
‘I love it. It’s your very own library!’ my daughter Rosie, now 19, giggled.
We even put in a fireplace for a cosy touch.
I call it The Book Temple, my shrine to literature.
Deciding it was too beautiful not to share, in November 2022 I invited 40 people over. We had wine and cheese, and chatted about books.
Now, every Saturday I host a book sale in The Temple. And each month, I hold a book club with a regular group of about six.
Sharing the joy of a novel over a wine and nibbles is always a dream.
Lachlan loves classical guitar, so he and his mates play in The Book Temple as it has amazing acoustics.
And other bands make use of the space too.
My humble book abode has hosted a book launch, and I hope to do more.
My 5000 tomes hold so many memories, and I love how they’re bringing together a community.
It’s one chapter at a time, and I never want it to end
