{"id":13964,"date":"2025-08-14T18:34:32","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T18:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/08\/14\/bookstores-as-portals-from-shakespeare-and-company-to-albertine-books\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T18:34:37","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T18:34:37","slug":"bookstores-as-portals-from-shakespeare-and-company-to-albertine-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/08\/14\/bookstores-as-portals-from-shakespeare-and-company-to-albertine-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Bookstores as Portals: From Shakespeare and Company to Albertine Books"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Albertine Books hosts events encouraging intellectual dialogue across cultural and geographic boundaries, such as this 2022 talk by author and Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux. Getty Images for Albertine Books<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last summer, I studied French in a suburb of Paris called Issy-les-Moulineaux. I walked fifteen minutes uphill from the m\u00e9tro each evening, on sidewalks of winding roads and through hidden pathways bordered by brambles. The house where I stayed was inviting, creaky and lived-in: the showerhead faultily sprayed water this way and that, the cutlery was slightly blemished and footsteps echoed around both floors. Dark wooden bookshelves lined the dining room walls, filled with French translations of books I knew and loved, four Daphne du Mauriers in a row: Ma cousine Rachel<\/i>, Le G\u00e9n\u00e9ral du Roi<\/i>, L\u2019Auberge de la Jama\u00efque<\/i> and Rebecca<\/i>. For the last, my host mother placed emphasis on the third syllable: Rebecc-ah! At the time, I was reading Yasmina Reza<\/a>\u2019s Art<\/i>, a French play about the meaning of a blank white canvas. I adored the rich classroom discourse in the morning, the museum hopping, giggling on the m\u00e9tro and afternoon caf\u00e9 chats.<\/p>\n

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At the four-week mark, however, Paris lost its charm. The culture I had so long romanticized started to feel pretentious and artificial. Maybe I felt a little lost; maybe I simply missed home. Some retailers, pedestrians and even museumgoers were hostile or inappropriate, and the blurry Polaroids of someone else\u2019s family on the dresser made me long for my own. I missed the U.S. so much and craved a connecting thread, so I\u2019d sneak over to Shakespeare and Company, the iconic English-language bookstore on Paris\u2019 Left Bank. There was always a line, but I\u2019d queue up behind the dark green facade until it was my turn.<\/p>\n

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Bookseller George Whitman opened Shakespeare and Company in 1951, and it has been an intellectual hub for English-speaking Parisians. Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Entering was like traversing a portal to home. The English titles, author names and book covers were a welcome respite from France. I felt incomprehensibly relieved to hear people speak English and see American and British titles laid out in beautiful and familiar piles. Though the bookshop itself was always crammed with shoppers and tourists, the upper floor offered dimly lit reading nooks. During free moments that summer, I\u2019d escape to the bookshop and stare at the novels, routinely leaving with two or one but sometimes buying none. The small act of self-care anchored me; it felt like visiting home.<\/p>\n

Flash forward a year, when I visited Albertine Books in Manhattan for much the same reason I visited Shakespeare and Company. I desperately needed a portal to a different place, only this time, that place was Paris. The truth was, after leaving, I immediately missed not only the city itself but also the opportunity to be a leisurely and detached fl\u00e2neuse, the rich royal history of kings and court and the cultural emphasis on intellect, philosophy and big ideas. My appreciation only grew back at school, where I enrolled in French literature courses and reached for passionate, provocative francophone titles when reading for pleasure.<\/p>\n

My mastery of the language matured at a quicker pace when it came to reading versus listening or speaking. Though I was still nervous about speaking up or conversing outside of necessity, I could grasp heady French authorial voices and began working through passages fluidly. A few months ago, I even acted in a French theatre troupe\u2019s soir\u00e9e de th\u00e9\u00e2tre, playing the lovesick daughter Ang\u00e9lique in scenes from Moli\u00e8re\u2019s Le Malade Imaginaire<\/i>. \u201cCrois-tu qu\u2019il m\u2019aime autant qu\u2019il me le dit,\u201d I asked (\u201cDo you think he loves me as much as he says he does?\u201d).<\/p>\n

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Albertine Books offers a robust selection of French and English titles with deft curation. Photo by Timothy Fadek\/Corbis via Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During this long, hot summer, I\u2019ve made an effort to maintain my French reading skills by adding French books into my summer reading queue. I\u2019ve enjoyed la plume of Philippe Besson and Fran\u00e7oise Sagan. I recently finished Maud Ventura<\/a>\u2019s Mon mari<\/i>, a smashing success in both French and English, which I picked up from Albertine\u2019s coup de coeur shelf. In it, Ventura writes of a woman follement<\/i> (English: madly) obsessed with her husband.<\/p>\n

With an impressive selection of over 14,000 titles from thirty francophone countries, Albertine Books is the only New York bookshop to offer a robust list of French and English books. I want to return because it feels like walking into Paris, a city I was ironically once eager to escape.<\/p>\n

This particular transportive bookstore can be found inside the Upper East Side\u2019s historic Payne Whitney<\/a> mansion, built in the first decade of the 20th Century. The building at 972 Fifth Avenue has served as the Cultural Services of the French Embassy since 1952, and the bookshop opened in 2014. Entering the Villa Albertine, one walks into a marble rotunda, pillars orbiting a central statue of youth. To the right sits \u201cThe Venetian Room,\u201d a mirrored space seemingly transplanted from an opulent 18th-century European mansion: mirrored walls, soft portraits and Meissen porcelain crowd the lavish interior.<\/p>\n

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The bookstore\u2019s celebrated second-floor ceiling is hand-painted, modeled after the artwork of German villa. Photo by Timothy Fadek\/Corbis via Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The hall opens to the bookstore. On social media, Albertine Books is renowned for its hand-painted astrological ceiling, modeled after the work of artist Franz von Stuck<\/a> on the music room ceiling at the Villa Stuck in Munich. Albertine\u2019s ceiling is a deep, celestial navy, spotted with tiny gold stars and larger planetary and astrological symbology.<\/p>\n

For non-Francophones, Albertine is still worth a visit: the reams of literature translated from French include works by contemporary authors as well as classics, perfect for engaging with French literature in a comfortable tongue. The inverse\u2014American and global literature translated into French\u2014also occupies much of the bookstore. Popular reads like Freida McFadden<\/a>\u2019s La Femme de M\u00e9nage<\/i>, Harry Potter et la Chambre des Secrets<\/i> and Toshikazu Kawaguchi<\/a>\u2019s Tant que le caf\u00e9 est encore chaud<\/i> were fun to see there sitting alongside timeless greats like Jane Austen<\/a>\u2019s Orgueil et Pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s<\/i> or Hom\u00e8re\u2019s Iliade<\/i>. Of course, French authors take center stage\u2014Le\u00efla Slimani, Patrick Modiano<\/a>, Alexandre Dumas<\/a> and hundreds more. Upstairs, old and rare books are housed behind a glass screen.<\/p>\n

When I missed home, Shakespeare and Company brought me back. Conversely, Albertine became my portal back to Paris. If I didn\u2019t have other places to be, I would have stayed at Albertine for hours and hours, browsing and buying and browsing some more. French books\u2014especially paperbacks\u2014tend to be more affordable than American ones, and I left with two new ones and a bookmark without breaking the bank.<\/p>\n

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