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prudenceandthecrow.bsky.social
Prudence and the Crow
@prudenceandthecrow.bsky.social
270 followers 190 following 690 posts
The UK-based vintage paperback book subscription box and online bookshop.

Find our subscriptions and books for sale at https://prudenceandthecrow.com - and shop our art prints and stationery at https://mymble.com !
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Day 7 of #patcadvent is Noggin the Nog by Oliver Postgate & Peter Firmin. The animated tv series began in 1959, with books: 1965-77.

'Listen to me and I will tell you the story of Noggin the Nog, as it was told in the days of old by the men of the Northlands, as they sat by their great log fires…'
Noggin the Nog, resplendent in golden crown, holds court in a grand stone hall.
December 7, 2025 at 7:55 AM
prudenceandthecrow.bsky.social
Day 6, #patcadvent winter-y, seasonal-ish read is Soonchild, by Russell Hoban,
illustrated by Alexis Deacon. It's a very peculiar, different piece of storytelling, audience unclear, which leaves you with a fair bit to reflect on. The illustrations make this quite the experience 💙📚
A hardback copy of Soonchild, with a soft pencil illustration of a polar bear on the cover. In the photograph, our smooth polar bear figurine is positioned next to the book, as if looking curiously at a portrait of himself.
December 6, 2025 at 5:27 PM
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Day 5 of #patcadvent is Shirley Hughes' Snow in the Garden: A First Book of Christmas. I have to admit to not having heard of this lovely anthology of winter stories, poems, recipies and crafts until this year. Published in 2018, every page is decorated with Shirley Hughes' beautiful illustrations.
A small girl in a red coat smiles at a little robin on a branch. She's stood in a snowy woodland scene.
December 5, 2025 at 8:42 PM
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Day 4 of #patcadvent is Lotta's Christmas Surprise by Astrid Lindgren.

Lotta saves Christmas with the aid of her tenaciousness and ever-present toy pig, Bamsen 🐖🎄

Tragically out of print in its English translation so if you see a copy be sure to snap it up!

Illustration by Ilon Wilkland. 💙📚
A little girl in a blue woollen hat and red jacket pulls a Christmas tree determinedly on a rope. Her beloved stuffed pig, Bamsen, is having a ride on the tree.
December 4, 2025 at 7:26 PM
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Day 3 of #patcadvent is Waiting for Christmas by Monica Greenfield. Published in 1996, Waiting for Christmas follows the gentle adventures of two children as they decorate the tree, visit relatives and generally look forward to Christmas Day.

Illustration by Jan Spivey Gilchrist.
Two small children look happily at each other over a beautifully-decorated gingerbread house.
December 3, 2025 at 8:18 AM
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Merry #patcadvent Day 2! Moving westwards for this beautiful illustration, often used as a cover, by Edward Ardizzone, for Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales. If you've not heard Thomas reading it himself, very much recommend tinyurl.com/achildschris... where you can hear this in full.
A delicate colour illustration of a little girl in a blue coat and red hat walking down a snowy hill towards a street of houses.
December 2, 2025 at 9:10 AM
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Welcome once again to Prudence and the Crow Advent! Follow along (or mute!) with the hashtag #patcadvent

We begin with John Masefield's The Box of Delights - an intensely wintery tale. Perhaps you remember the (frankly a bit scary) '80s BBC adaptation?

Illustration: Sara Ogilvie 💙📚
A small girl accessorised with a pirate hat and cutlass over her green top and red skirt has opened tall French windows to a tall man clad in a green hat, overcoat and suit. He tips his hat to her. It's snowing outside, and inside a thin Christmas tree is decorated. It's the beginning of something interesting.
December 1, 2025 at 5:42 AM
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Dead-End Memories, by Banana Yoshimoto (Hallowe'en gift!). Proper rainy Sunday morning reading scenario today.
A paperback copy of Dead-End Memories by Banana Yoshimoto, surrounded by three cups, one of espresso, one double decaf espresso, and a pint of peppermint tea.
November 2, 2025 at 9:00 AM
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On the 1st January this year I started reading Crow The Fellowship of the Ring at bedtime, mostly 1-2 bits a night. It is indeed perfectly chunked for bedtime reading. I did not sing the songs. There is a lot of walking. I relearnt many obscure nature words. My Elves are all Welsh. We continue. 💙📚
Frontispiece of The Two Towers, by JRR Tolkien, 1978 hardback edition. Decorated with runes and elvish script.
October 13, 2025 at 7:55 PM
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Hi hi! Very excited to settle in with Melanie Burrows' latest on the life of Marie Antoinette, just right for right now...
October 5, 2025 at 8:02 AM
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Bret Easton Ellis' The Shards, which is taking me back to teenage summers with exactly the right amount of malice and anxiety...
The front cover of a fat hardback edition of Bret Easton Ellis' The Shards, sat on a soft stripey IKEA blanket
August 10, 2025 at 7:48 AM
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screaming

what more could a 1957 husband want from dinner than this
A man in a grey suit with navy tie serves himself from a table with five baskets of some kind of food laid out at place settings. There's an ominously red table cloth. Crucially, in the centre of the table, is what can only be described as an unpainted, alarmed-looking merry-go-round-style horse's head sticking out of a heap of red flowers. The caption explains: Serve a simple meal-in-a-basket supper in style if it's your husband's night to entertain his friends. Masses of red geraniums grounded in a mound of wet sphagnum moss and topped with an interesting figurehead make an impressive and masculine centre decoration. Be sure to protect the table top by placing centrepiece on a board.
July 25, 2025 at 7:49 PM
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Finally allowing myself to settle down for the evening with my treasured stack of 1950's American Better Homes magazines. The gadget adverts and recipes alone are astonishing.
The front cover of Better Homes and Gardens, September 1957. Headlines include "IDEA HOME FOR 1957 - See it in full colour!", "It's news - "Preventative Housekeeping"" and "Have a back yard you can brag about", along with "Foods with flair from a famous Texas restaurant".
July 25, 2025 at 7:23 PM
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Found this copy of Iain Banks' A Song of Stone on our village bookshelf last week and am very much looking forward to it, haven't come across this before... 💙📚
My hand holding up Iain Banks' A Song of Stone (in front of my very healthy spider plant ).
July 2, 2025 at 5:52 AM
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It's my birthday today, and these are my birthday books from Crow! Absolutely delighted 💙📚💙
Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa - Absolutely On Music, and Derek Jarman's a finger in the fishes mouth, on a blanket on my lap
June 18, 2025 at 8:17 AM
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Sorting some of the #patclibrary earlier, I found this 1938 copy of Our Street, by Jan Petersen. Reprinted in 2010, it's possible to get old of this fairly easily: I highly recommend. It retells the grim experiences of everyday anti-Fascists in 1930s Berlin. 💙📚

www.theguardian.com/books/2010/f...
The front cover of Our Street, by Jan Petersen. A Left Book Club edition, "not for sale to the public" soft back, from 1938, orange cover with black font. The foreword to Our Street by Jan Petersen, by the translator, Betty Rensen. Is this a novel? The author had no intention, he says, of writing a novel when he started the book. He began by noting down the events as they occurred. But he soon realised that he must disguise some of the people concerned, and in certain cases transpose the events to different surroundings to prevent the Nazis suspecting himself and the comrades he was describing. It was therefore natural that this chronicle of the events that took place in Berlin-Charlottesburg between January 1933 and June 1934 should develop into a kind of novel. But this is no novel in the strict sense of the word. Everything the auhor has described is true, although Ede's name may not be Ede, and he has no "ugly raw cavity in place of one eye". The book is authentic in context but not always in form. The names of the dead published by the author are all real names. The events leading to their death, as recorded in the book, are also all genuine. But many more murders and executions have taken place: they could not all be recounted here, because of the possible repercussions on relatives and friends. The author had, therefore, to be content with the names in the death-list. These names are all well known in Berlin-Charlottesburg, and in some cases the families have emigrated beyond the reach of Nazi "justice". The author began writing this book because he and his comrades felt that, if the thinking men and women of the world could learn what Fascism really means, they would rally to the support of the German anti-Fascists. For the German anti-Fascists are not waging their great fight for liberty and justice for Germany alone; Germany and Spain are to-day the two main battle-fields on which the world-struggle for peace and democracy is being fought. Author's Preface. This book, written with great difficulty in Germany, is intended as a chronicle of the events that took place in the "red" Wallstrasse in Berlin-Charlottenburg. But, despite the local character of the narrative, it is not the history of just *one* working class street in Fascist Germany. Fascism has resulted in similar scenes in all the towns in Germany. The list on the next page contains the names of Charlottenburg's murdered anti-Fascists. It is authentic, but certainly not complete, and yet these are the victims of this *one* district of West Berlin. This book is dedicated to the Dead of Charlottenburg, to commemorate all the victims of Fascism. It is meant to describe the courage of thousands, of tens of thousands, of nameless proletarian heroes. Threatened by the axe, by brutal imprisonment, they fearlessly continue their fight - the great fight for the deliverance of the German people! For Socialism! The title page of Our Street, written in the heart of Fascist Germany by Jan Petersen. 1938.
May 19, 2025 at 2:00 PM
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With the thousands of books we've been fortunate enough to encounter, it feels like we've seen every book ever, but today a glorious surprise: a 1977 novelisation of More of The Good Life, my favourite ever sitcom. The blurb rather requires some context...thrilled to add it to the #patclibrary

💙📚
The Penguin Classic edition of More of the Good Life, by John Esmonde & Bob Larbey, adapted from the TV series by Christine Sparks. The cover shows Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal and Penelope Keith in the BBC-TV production of The Good Life. BBC copyright photograph by David Edwards. Cover lettering by Shirtsleeve Studios. The back blurb reads "Back home in The Avenue, Surbiton, the harvest (see The Good Life, published in Penguin) is safely in, and the Goods plough on with self-sufficiency and all that. Not precisely Margo Leadbetter's cup of tea. But then Margo is, on her own admission, that most pathetic of creatures - a non-complete woman. So, moved by neighbourly love, the Goods and the 'betters get together and do their best."
May 9, 2025 at 8:24 AM
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As of right this moment when it just arrived, I'm super excited to be starting Woodworking, by @emilystjams.bsky.social which features an Abigail, and there aren't a lot of us Abigails in fiction! (I'm Prudence, but also, shhh, irl Abigail XD) I'm precisely one paragraph in and I love her already.
The hardback edition of Woodworking, by Emily St. James.
April 27, 2025 at 1:43 PM
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Crow and I were wandering the National Portrait Gallery the other day when we came upon this portrait of Jerome K. Jerome. Much as I adore the "Three Men..." books, I didn't know how much he could look like he might appear in Our Flag Means Death, nor of his support for artist Philip de László.
A gold-framed portrait of Jerome K. Jerome, dressed in pleasant cream shirt and coat, painted realistically, with warmth and softness. Jerome K. Jerome 1859 - 1927 By Philip de László Jerome is best known for his comic novel, Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, which remains a popular classic and has been adapted for film, television, radio and the stage. Leaving school at fourteen, Jerome worked as a railway clerk and then as an actor, which inspired his first book One the Stage - and Off (1885). Working as a journalist and editor, he wrote fiction in the evenings. When the Hungarian-born portrait painter Philip de László was interned as an 'enemy alien' during the First World War, Jerome campaigned for his release. This portrait is testament to their friendship. Oil on canvas, 1921. Bequeathed by the author's widow, Georgina Elizabeth Henrietta Stanley Jerome (née Marris), 1966.
April 26, 2025 at 2:57 PM
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Friday night, let's goooo! 💙📚🪐
A brand new copy of The Murderbot Diaries: Vol. 1: Artificial Condition by Martha Wells. From the picture you can infer that I'm tucked in bed under nice fresh sheets...
April 11, 2025 at 5:35 PM
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Thought I'd try and tidy up a room, immediately faced by this random stack of books which defy all my sorting abilities. How did they end up here?! I wish I kept a stern order to the #patclibrary but alas, I catalogue with vibes only... 💙📚
A stack of books - from bottom to top: Bob Mortimer's autobiography, a Murakami diary from 2020, Antonia Fraser's The Weaker Vessel, Tales from King Arthur, The Once and Future King, Graded Literature Readers - Fifth Book, Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens, Kitty Villiers by Lewis Gibbs and a collection of Chesterton essays and poems.
April 5, 2025 at 1:15 PM
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Going through some books I saved from a university library weeding about six years' ago, I'm glad I saved this actually fairly evergreen but also handy historic record on Blogging, although I must say Biz Stone passed me by! 💙📚
The cover of Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content, by Biz Stone. It's a large red book with a weird shadowy background picture of a man stretching his hand towards the camera. Unsettling in a cyberpunk kind of way... Content Highlights of the blogging book, including HTML, Design and Typography Advice, Adding Search, Headlines and other Dynamic Features, How to Syndicate with RSS or JavaScript.
March 31, 2025 at 9:46 AM
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Went all the way up to town today to speak to people about things, and finally got to a bookshop to get Sunrise on the Reaping. Absolutely wolfed the first half on the train, but why must books be so big?! Really into it though, I have missed such readable drama as the Hunger Games books.
My hand holding open Sunrise on the Reaping on the train
March 26, 2025 at 8:51 PM
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Ah if you're outside the UK (we can only ship to the UK at the moment) I don't think this link shows the same, alas! Let me chuck some of the pictures in though because it is such a sight 💙
The cover of The Talk of the School by Alys Chatwyn - it features a small oval picture of a line drawing of a very surly girl looking out with a side-eye The spine of The Talk of the School, featuring the surly girl sauntering along An insert from The Talk of the School - the frontispiece where the girl is sitting on a bed looking disdainfully down to her left
March 12, 2025 at 7:29 PM
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Always nice when a second-hand bookshelf has a Margaret Atwood that a) I've not read b) matches my blanket! 💙📚
A copy of Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed, purple-ish cover and red-stained edges, being held by me over a similarly-coloured blanket.
March 7, 2025 at 5:01 PM