Koorong is a Christian store, and supply a large variety of items despite being labelled a 'book…read morestore'. I'm not personally very religious and had to walk in to buy a prop for a show, but the atmosphere was actually very pleasant and the variety of items were interesting to inspect. They sell books, DVD's, pictures, statues, jewellery and pretty much anything you can think of. Their website shows their full catalogue too. The staff were very helpful and friendly, and the whole store just protruded positivity and happiness. If anything was to convert me, it'd probably be this store! Haha.

I've been at Monash Clayton since 1971, apart from a few years in the early '80s, so I've seen the…read morebookshop evolve over a long period. It was always fairly middling compared to university bookshops around the world. Of course they all stock the required textbooks. Beyond that Monash had a reasonably decent selection of general fiction and non-fiction and a good kids' corner; several shelves of academic books in the humanities; lousy coverage of the sciences beyond basic texts. But that was before. Now there are (i) text books, and (ii) merchandise. By "merchandise" I mean crappy souvenir stuff you sell to parents on graduation day. No more general books at all. It is a travesty to call this hole a bookshop. It is an utter abrogation of any responsibility to add to the intellectual life of the campus. This is a worldwide phenomenon unfortunately. Shocked when I walked into the University of Colorado bookshop in Boulder last year -- this used to be one of the best university bookshops anywhere -- to find it too had turned into a nasty souvenir-and-textbook dump. We can thank Amazon I guess. The age of being able to browse in an upmarket/intellectual bookshop is gone.

If you've ever been to a University Bookshop, you'll know that they sell a mixture of course list…read morebooks, stationary, and random overpriced things to aid in your procrastination. This one is the same. Go at the start of semester, and there'll be piles and piles of reading guides for each unit, all arranged in a vaguely logical way (meaning you'll only spend five minutes looking for yours instead of most of the day). Prepare to depart with most of your savings account as books and photocopying ain't cheap, and then congratulate yourself on study well prepared for. The Monash Clayton bookshop deserves an extra special mention for their customer service during peak periods at the start of each semester. Yes, we know to expect to queue up for an hour. It's just what happens, what with thousands of students trying to buy their books in the same week. So what have the staff decided to do? Walk around chatting to the customers, cheering them up, reassuring them the wait won't be too long, and handing out chupa chups. Genius.