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When I first came across collections, I could not get enough of them. Like David, I had pages and pages of them. As he observed, my reader was slow to open and navigate. Nonetheless, I persisted, adding more collections rather than settling for fewer.
Recently, however, I have made a radical change.
I now keep and administer all of my books in Calibre. My reader has two collections, one called General with not more than 25 books, and another called Juvenile with perhaps 20-25 books. The Juvenile selection is relatively static as I can nearly always find something the youngsters will enjoy from that list, although I happily add others on request.
My own list of 25 books in the General collection is a moveable feast.
They are all different authors chosen because I really enjoy their work. I read the books one after the other. When I have completed that set, I remove them and replace them with the next set of 25 by, essentially, the same authors, although I make changes to the author choice at this time, so that the list of authors gradually evolves.
The selection is made using Calibre, which I have tailored with virtual libraries, to assist in identifying and loading the next set of 25 authors' works. The emphasis is on making my reader pleasant to use, which it certainly is, with not more than 50 books on it at one time. Occasional reference to a large library of books is then available through Calibre, where all sorts of collections are readily created, according to my mood.
This basic procedure also suits my wife, although she prefers to read a given author's complete list in a pre-determined order, before choosing her next author(s). The principle of the lightly loaded reader still applies.
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