Quote:
Originally Posted by Yapyap
I keep a few hundred TBR books and a dozen or so read books (that I know I'll want to browse occasionally or check something) on my Paperwhite.
All my ebooks, regardless of origin, are in Calibre, marked read or unread, and I usually send any recent purchases that I think I might wish to read sooner rather than later (as quite a few of my book buys are deals on things of the "hmm, this might be good for whenever I'm in the mood for this genre again" kind I don't necessarily intend to read them right away) directly to my Paperwhite via Send to Kindle PC app (for non-Amazon books) or download them from the Cloud (for Amazon books).
I delete the overwhelming majority of read books from my reader immediately after finishing them - I might want to re-read some of them eventually, but it's rare that I'll want to do it in the next few years. They're all on my computer (and backed up on external hard drive and in a cloud) anyway.
I quite understand the sense of "I want to keep everything on the reader because I never know what I want to read next" but for me, keeping a few hundred unread books from various genres on the Kindle at any one time is good enough - besides, I work from home and spend most of my non-reading time at my computer, so if I get an urge to read anything else, Send to Kindle is quick, doesn't require finding the USB cable and can be done in a minute.
It takes far less time to browse my Calibre library and send a book (when I've found one that looks appealing) wirelessly directly to the Kindle than it would to browse for an appealing-looking book on the reader itself. 
And for those times when I'm not near my computer, e.g. when travelling .. well, the few hundred TBR books on the device itself will be more than sufficient for choice, especially since I don't necessarily have much time to read when on holidays, other than on a train or plane or at the most half an hour before sleep. |
To me this seems normal or moderate usage. I gather that a slight or not so slight minority prefer to have less than 10 books on their device with a slight majority prefer to have less than 50.(arbitrary figures )
I would have every ebook on my reader if it was practical even if I had a million
It isn't practical even on the Sony which handles collections beautifully with a perfectly working slidebar with previews or the sadly missed alphabetical lookup. Too many books, make it harder to browse. Still it is pretty convenient up to 4,000. (I once put every PD book I could find, articles and various PDF's on the Sony just to see if it could handle them. It was working fine at 8,000 but my brain couldn't handle it) Did the same on another newer reader and 12 hours later it was still not opening the shelf list
I hink your approach is normal and well balanced. I actually think all of the ways people choose to use their readers are perfectly fine but I want an ereader with every book I want to read at my fingertips instantly. Of course I want a lot of things, and seldom expect to get them.
Helen