When we arrived at the airport, my husband asked me if I wanted to try his favorite airport spot…read more Off we go! I love books, I love coffee : great combination! It's hidden behind the books so it's nice and quiet. Don't feel like you are in an airport. I browsed around in the book section while my tea cooled down. It's the secret spot of the pilots / air staff! They know where to go to avoid the crowds! My husband had a coffee and he loved it. I had a soy chai - it was good but not amazing. Overall great little find!

Books and coffee? I'm sold! A great alternative to the loud, crass food courts that are usually…read morefound in airports. The Toby's Estate coffee is a fairly easily blend to serve. It's hard to ruin it. This place won't blow your socks off but it will offer a decent coffee and a respite from the world.

I was dismayed at the recent demise of bookstores Angus and Robertson and Borders. It was sadly…read moresignaling the end of the paperback era and a glimpse of how technology has the power to change the way we will read and communicate in the future. Feeling the need to support the publishing industry, I recently came across All Books for Less. I guess the point of difference is the $5 price of all books for sale which gives them some hope of remaining viable in the foreseeable future. But if you're like me and prefer the smell and feel of a book made of paper rather than reading from an avatar from Amazon.com, go to All Books for Less and support our bookstores! They've got an immense and varied selection available. I came across sections for gardening, history, crime, romance, biographies and drama. Not being up to date on the current best sellers list and unsure of what to get, I chose the prequel to SATC (Sex and the City), and a true story of a talented writer's battle with anorexia which resulted in her death, titled 'Daddy's Little Girl'. It's not a bad read but I probably wouldn't recommend it, and the SATC prequel is a big fat flop and will be a box office disaster should it make it to the big screen. But the point is there is now another player out there with the buying power to stock a great variety of new and best sellers. Lets get behind them and support a store that could save the paperback from extinction.

I must warn you. You should not come here if you are saving money. You should not come here if you…read moreare trying to live light. You should not come here if you're about to go overseas, or if you're about to move house. Because as soon as you step through the doors, you will fall into a hypnotic book-trance as over 8000 titles try to lure you over to them, all words and tongues, and you won't leave until you have a brown-paper lunch-bag full of the most delicious literary treats you could hope for! Warren and Kirsty have created the most beautiful inner-city shrine to literature, a land of teak and glass artifacts, tempting sit-spots and a plenty titles that are guaranteed to fill you with a sense of wonderment and inspiration! They also have an array of in-store events and appearances, and are just some of the most lovely people you'll meet! Moving to Melbourne from a small country town, I was warned you'd be hard pressed to come by a sense of community and caring in the big, cold city. But spending a little time in the store you'll see there's a heartbeat and lifeblood flowing though our beautiful Melbourne - and the soulful brain is at Embiggen. Go get lost there for a little while - you'll likely end up finding yourself on the shelves there somewhere!

I LOVE this swanky little book shop. There's a sweet open window front display of the whole store…read morewhich really feasts the eyes. When en-route to a meeting a friend for coffee i received a text that said she was going to be running late and lucky enough i was walking past Embiggen when this happened. Embiggen was actually closed up until mid October due to flooding (I'm sure it had something to do with that massive storm in August), now open Embiggen is a book store to be reckoned with. They have a large range of titles all spread across a wooden interior (both floor and shelving), genres range from anything Art & Design, Sciences, Fiction, Economics, Politics, Poetry, Travel and more, there's a epic range for you to procrastinate through.

When I first visited this place a few years back it was a small second-hand bookshop tucked around…read morethe corner near the Essendon Railway Station. Well, it seems as if things happened and has now condensed into a single second-hand shop down in Moonee Ponds, but it is quite a lot larger, and also has a much more diverse stock. Okay, while they also sell stamps, I also disovered that they have not just a decent collection of books, but also of DVDs and CDs. In fact the collection is so large you could spend a considerable amount of time exploring its nooks and crannies looking for that elusive treasure - and that elusive treasure is certainly going to be there, you just don't know what it is going to be until you find it.