Glad you got it, Syclone!
The only thing I can address is the books question. When I load from Calibre I open it with the Reader load-from-storage and just start reading, unless there's a reason it has to be in the library, in which case I add it while reading. This leaves most of my books in the downloads folder. Not as "pretty" as having them all in the Library with the covers showing, but faster. Does that help any??