I agree, sacrificing usability is the antithesis of good design. What I want is an interface that exposes functionality without becoming cluttered, that is intuitive and flexible. If I do those things properly it will most likely be beautiful anyway.
I am using media queries to have a responsive design and the entire container is flexible. That means even with this mockup (which is by no means complete) elements can be added and removed from the interface dynamically without breaking anything.
That said I know elements like search and sort are missing along with other things are m.i.a. so I have some things to keep in mind. Is there anything on the back end concerning those things that I should be aware of? I've looked through the code but I am not a python guy.
Specifically functionality that is provided through python and html that is not exposed through opds.
One thing I want to add is a way for a tag (custom or standard) to be chosen as a default display. Perhaps a 'want to read' or 'new news' or 'goodreads bookself' books. The choice will be saved (cookie or html5 storage?) so that the home page will have a list of the books most likely to be wanted by the user. I think that would be especially helpful on smaller mobile devices were navigation can be a pain.