Calibre talks to iTunes, which in turn talks to the connected iDevice. Calibre does not control the 'Date Added' value in iTunes; iTunes does.
The order of the books displayed in the Bookshelf view in iBooks is reverse chronological, i.e., the first book shown (at the top left) is the last book added to iBooks by iTunes.
For books already installed on the iDevice, you can change the Bookshelf order manually:
- In the covers view:
- Touch the 'Edit' button at the top right corner of the screen
- Touch and drag each book to its new location
- In the list view:
- Touch the 'Edit' button at the top right corner of the screen
- Touch and drag the three horizontal bars icon at the right edge of the book listing to its new location
For books being added by iTunes, the iBooks bookshelf order will be reverse chronological. To control the presentation order of the added books, you can drag them from iTunes Books playlist to the connected iDevice Books playlist. If you add book 1, then 2, then 3, the books will be shown in the Bookshelf view in order 3, 2, 1.
When syncing an iDevice, books being added to iBooks are added in an order detemined by iTunes, and I don't know (nor care) the order it uses. A motivated user might want to do further research.
G