Yes. It's always been automounted for me, and worked fine that way up to the 0.6.6 release.
I always plug it in before starting calibre, and the just unmount it from the desktop(after quitting calibre). I never use the unmount option inside of calibre, which is new for 0.6.x series I think anyways.
I'd prefer to keep the auto-mounting as shipped with Ubuntu. No idea what they do now as I haven't bothered digging into those details for years since most linux distros appear to be able to manage mounting fairly well nowadays... (although when installing 8.10 on this notebook I had to dredge up some rusty old skills as I had to use the alternate text installer since the video drivers didn't work. I thought that I had left those days behind forever... at least I didn't have to bootstrap gcc and build X...)
[EDIT]
Started digging a little, dmesg turns up
Code:
[132764.420800] usb 2-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[132764.553933] usb 2-4: configuration #1 chosen from 2 choices
[132764.565342] scsi7 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[132764.566083] usb-storage: device found at 3
[132764.566085] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[132769.564466] usb-storage: device scan complete
[132769.565064] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access Sony PRS-505/UC 1000 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[132769.565505] scsi 7:0:0:1: Direct-Access Sony PRS-505/UC:MS 1000 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[132769.566689] scsi 7:0:0:2: Direct-Access Sony PRS-505/UC:SD 1000 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[132769.577360] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 430848 512-byte hardware sectors: (220 MB/210 MiB)
[132769.578106] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[132769.578108] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 0f 00 00 00
[132769.578110] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[132769.579731] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 430848 512-byte hardware sectors: (220 MB/210 MiB)
[132769.580480] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[132769.580481] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 0f 00 00 00
[132769.580483] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[132769.580485] sdb:
[132769.588982] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[132769.589046] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[132769.591316] sd 7:0:0:1: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
[132769.591368] sd 7:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[132769.594869] sd 7:0:0:2: [sdd] 249344 512-byte hardware sectors: (127 MB/121 MiB)
[132769.687881] sd 7:0:0:2: [sdd] Write Protect is off
[132769.687885] sd 7:0:0:2: [sdd] Mode Sense: 0f 00 00 00
[132769.687887] sd 7:0:0:2: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
[132769.716237] sd 7:0:0:2: [sdd] 249344 512-byte hardware sectors: (127 MB/121 MiB)
[132769.807869] sd 7:0:0:2: [sdd] Write Protect is off
[132769.807871] sd 7:0:0:2: [sdd] Mode Sense: 0f 00 00 00
[132769.807873] sd 7:0:0:2: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
[132769.807878] sdd: sdd1
[132769.814784] sd 7:0:0:2: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk
[132769.814845] sd 7:0:0:2: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
which would be the automounting, still looking around to see what they're actually doing though. If it's a userspace daemon, kernel module, or some sort of combination of the two.
[/EDIT]