using Calibre to read Gutenberg mobi files

[bwshore]

Is it possible to view mobi books from Gutenberg using Calibre? if so, how?

I have some 50 books from the Gutenberg project, all mobi files obtained for free, on my iMac. I have no separate physical reader such as a Kindle or iPad. I thought I could use Calibre to maintain this library of books. But the conversion from mobi to epub, done by Calibre, ran for hours without completing all 50, and none of the converted books are readable: there is just a generic icon.

Has this been discussed already somewhere in the long list of mobi posts or in some other place?

[st_albert]

Calibre's viewer works with mobi format. Why do you want to convert to epub first?

[dwig]

Originally Posted by bwshore

Is it possible to view mobi books from Gutenberg using Calibre? if so, how?

I have some 50 books from the Gutenberg project, all mobi files ... But the conversion from mobi to epub, ...

There is absolutely no need to convert PG books from MOBI to ePUB, in order to read them with calibre, for two reasons:

1. Calibre's viewer will work fine with the MOBI versions.
2. You can download new copies in ePUB directly from PG instead of converting.

True, calibre should be able to convert any good MOBI file to ePUB unless the MOBI is restricted with DRM, which PG books aren't. Your conversion problem may stem from processing such a large batch at one time and encountering memory problems on your system.

If calibre's viewer won't display the MOBI books while calibre is running you should check Prefs to make sure that using the viewer for that format isn't disabled.