The Willoughby Book Club Personalised Subscription

For the reader who has an e-reader but loves the ritual of a physical book arriving, a personalised subscription beats a one-off hardback you might duplicate. The Willoughby Book Club describes itself as the UK's No.1 book subscription service: you tell them the recipient's favourite genres, authors and reading habits, and their team hand-picks a different title to post each month, so no two subscriptions are alike. It ranks here rather than higher because quality depends on the curators' judgement rather than a spec sheet, and the recipient does not choose each title themselves, which is the trade-off against simply gifting book tokens. It works as a fixed 3, 6 or 12-month gift (from an indicative £53 for three months, with the total rising for longer terms and some formats), with fiction, non-fiction and children's options, and the company says it donates a book to Book Aid International for every new subscription. Ideal as a recurring surprise for a hard-to-buy-for reader whose tastes you know reasonably well.