There's a new girl in town. ‘Albertine,’ a bookshop, has opened at the French Embassy onFifth Avenue. The brainchild of the French Cultural Counselor, Antonin Baudry--himself the author of "Weapons of Mass Diplomacy"--the shop will carry both English and French books, thereby filling a gap left by the closing of the Librairie de France at Rockefeller Center in 2009, when they found they could no longer afford the escalating rent. Of course, by opening within the French Embassy, 'Albertine', who always was a clever girl, has side-stepped that issue.And it;s in my neighborhood. I walk over, passing one of the Embassy's neighbors on East 79th Street. Don'y you love the entrance-- the doorsand the cascading flowers?  

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