[paola]

davidfor, robko, thanks for the advice - I am now starting to wonder whether the problem is with Calibre, and I wonder whether I could pick your brains on this one.

The reason I am starting to suspect Calibre is that while it is true that I noticed the problem first when syncing, it is also true that I had added a book from Calibre in the same sessions, and problems started with the next power on.

I had solved the problem after copying the backed up database. More precisely:
1. I overwrote the sqlite database with a previous working version, about a week old;
2. I synced the device - at this point things seemed exactly as before, i.e. most recent books not showing;
3. powered off;
4. powered on;
and after this all was working, meaning I had almost all the books there, bar the last sideloaded kepub.epub. I read a book, powered off, powered on, and still all working. The last sideloaded kepub.epub was showing as present on the device upon connecting it to the laptop, but would not appear in any view on the device. So I connected to calibre, which could see the said book; deleted it and resend it again.

Then I disconnected the Mini, and the sideloaded book now showing in my mini library. Powered off, then on, and back to the original problem: all the most recent books not showing, including the just sideloaded one. I connected to calibre again, and got the same error message reported above, i.e. it cannot connect to the device.

So I started again process from 1. , this time first deleting the newly sideloaded kepub.epub: i.e. I deleted the kepub.epub, overwrote the database with the backed up file from last week, synced the device, powered off, then on, and again had the mini back in working order again with all my books (sideloaded included) except from the last kepub.epub - but now I don't want to re-send the book via calibre, as I am afraid it will mess it up again.

Any ideas on what could be going wrong? I have been supercareful (as always, I should say) about disconnecting the device properly.