Mary Martin Bookshop — Local services in Melbourne

I have to say the space itself is clean and pleasant, and the idea of wrapping a book in brown paper with a short teaser on the front is very cute. It gives the shop a charming, slightly old-fashioned feel. However, the way the sections are labelled is quite misleading. The label “Classics” is applied to titles such as The Three Musketeers and other popular novels, which is rather misleading. In literary and academic contexts, Classics usually refers to ancient Greek and Roman texts, while classical literature refers to enduring works from later periods.

One would reasonably expect bookshop staff and owners to understand the difference between Classics and classical literature, and what each category is supposed to contain. As it stands, the shelving feels careless and uninformative, and frankly looks a bit silly for a shop that wants to appear knowledgeable. It is disappointing for readers who come in looking for...

23May19 1557 Inside the Southgate complex at street level next to the Yarra River the Mary Martin book shop does the right thing by piling books high on a shelf at the store entrance handy to the curious browser and passer-by. Too bad on this afternoon that the shop assistant could hardly be bothered and didn't welcome me into the store or call out a greeting to browsers. Any way, I couldn't make myself walk away she buy the books I wanted on Amazon Kindle so I went and bought a love story. Also a child's book for my granddaughters. Great...

I’m a frequent customer here, once to twice a week almost and although their range is good their service is awful. I’m never greeted with a hi, never receive a please or thank you, absolutely nothing. Considering consumers can now buy books online much cheaper then stand alone stores, you think the focus would be there for customer satisfaction. I always get served by the same women, dark hair, glasses, she’s the reason I won’t be retuning after several years of customer, joke of a human being she is, so rude...