Everyone I know at Macquarie University has a love-hate relationship with The Co-Op Book Shop. We love it because it gives us what we need - books from which we can study, learn and ultimately become great in our chosen fields. Course notes so specific that they aren't published by anyone else, and are needed by our particular subject or faculty.
However, we also hate it. We hate it because we hate spending our hard-earned Centrelink payments on stupid textbooks. We hate it because it is so damn expensive - over $600 this semester for these books, are you even serious? We hate it because the line is so damn long at the start of semester, when you and everyone else at this tertiary institution is in line for books for Accounting 101 and Law 586.
The Coop Bookshop sells textbooks for all the subjects at Macquarie, which are neatly organised according to faculty and year level - nice! It gives you the tools you need to learn Advanced Torts, Intermediate French or Business Administration. It's a funny business; at the start of semester, the shop is so busy that you must stand in line for hours to purchase, and they occasionally sell out of that book you really really need! But for the rest of the academic year it's as quiet as a grave, only rarely stirring for the stoner kid who realised in week 5 that he needed textbooks, or the odd person interested in reading a book for pleasure (emphasis on the odd). read more