12 Days of Books: Day 4

Gift Idea #4: Open Letter Subscription (starting at $65)

Purpose: Give great literature while supporting a good cause

Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s new non-profit publishing house for works in translation. Open Letter publishes twelve books per year, with a new book released every month. Chad Post, the Director of Open Letter, explains how the books are chosen:

[W]e’ve searched the world for these titles, with our first authors hailing from Croatia, Brazil, Norway, France, Lithuania, and Iceland. In deciding which titles to publish, our criteria were to identify titles that are both unique and lasting—books that are out of the ordinary (in a pleasing, beautiful way), and that will hopefully become the classics of tomorrow.

An Open Letter subscription is the perfect gift. It’s cheap (just $65 for half a year and $120 for the full year), and the books are intelligently chosen and beautifully designed. Your giftee will thank you throughout the year as the books get delivered month after month, and you can feel good about supporting the cultural and intellectual vitality of our planet.

I'm an Open Letter subscriber, and I’ve been very pleased with the Open Letter books I’ve received this fall. See my reviews of Nobody’s Home by Dubravka Ugresic (4/5) and The Taker and Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca (4.5/5).