[CJJ]

I had the original Tab 10.1. After the Dog chewed it up (I no longer recommend a leather case for tablets. Basically it's an expensive rawhide treat) I ended up with a Galaxy Tab 2 10.1. Glad I had accidental on it.

Ran into the same problems as OP. The old Tab was so much easier to use. Not a fan of ICS at this point.

Anyway, my workaround.

I used Google Drive to sync with my Calibre library. Anything added to Calibre will automatically be upload to Google Drive (you get 5Gb free, that's a lot of books).

I use Aldiko Book Reader (I use premium, but the free is fine). In my Google Drive App, when I open a book it will prompt me to either open it or save it to my Aldiko Library. The latter automatically adds it to my book shelf.

Google drive also allows you to tag files for offline use. So you can tag a bunch that you may want to read offline or just download them into the app.

If your goal is to transfer 100's or 1000's of books onto your tablet, this is obviously not a good work around. But for casual reading it works pretty well and (with wifi) you can always have access to all of your books.