Cataloging eBooks read

[Roodavis]

Heylo Friends,

It has been a few years since I last used Calibre. I just fired up my Calibre server today and it is running version 5.32.0 just to give you a clue to how long it has been.

This question is probably not even Calibre related, but I am hoping one of you smart people can point me in a good direction.

TL;DR

As I mentioned above I stopped maintaining an eBook library a few years ago, but I still read a lot of eBooks. Mostly through a Kindle Unlimited subscription, so a lot of new authors, I still have a few county library cards for checking how some of my favorite established authors as well.

I work in technology support for a local school district and each summer the teachers have a Summer Reading Challenge. The librarian at the high school knows that I am an avid reader and asked me to participate. The problem I am facing is the fact that I have never really tracked or logged books I have read or am reading. That is a big part of the "challenge". I of course thought that since Kindle Unlimited and Goodreads are both Amazon products it would be pretty simple to just integrate or import/export book titles from KU to GR, then just manually enter the local library books or iBooks titles. So far that has been a big nope, nada, ain't gonna happen. So as I was reading another book today I thought of Calibre and was hoping maybe there was some way to track books read without actually adding the books or files to the Calibre library.

Or maybe the community has a suggestion that doesn't require me to manually add book information to Goodreads or some other book logging, tracking application.

TL;DR

Finally a question, please feel free to flag it as off-topic and send me somewhere else.

I can view the list of 1211 books I have read in KU since January of 2021. Does anyone know a way to extract that data into a file format that I could then import or parse in a usable fashion?

Thanks for your time and maybe this will inspire me to checkout the changes in Calibre and update my library.

Rick

[ownedbycats]

You don't necessarily need to add the files. I use 0-byte .paperbook and .overdrive files.

Check out the Reading Goal plugin.

[theducks]

Calibre
Add:Add Empty book (no formats)
I use this (AKA Empty Book)
1) to keep track of my Dead Tree books
2) As A Wish list for the future releases or just those not yet bought.

BTW Add from ISBN makes an Empty Book , It allows a simple list (ISBN per line) and processes fetches metadata. It also can set a Tag (for the batch)

[Quoth]

I've loads of calibre entries with no actual book files.

[BetterRed]

My Creators library (authors, illustrators etc) only has placeholder entries on which to hang custom columns pertinent to Creators. No format files in the book folders, a few Creators do have data folders.

BR