[chaley]

Originally Posted by JLYates

I have only one collection (I think) of books.

I think that we just identified one of the problems -- a difference in terminology. When I say 'collection', I am talking about something on the Sony reader. On my 300, when looking at the basic screen (Continue reading, Books by ..., ), I see 'Collections'. That grouping, not the name inside, is 'Collections'. A 'collection' (singular) is a named group of books found inside Collections.

Calibre maintains a 'library', which is a bunch (avoiding the word 'collection' ) of books. Calibre maintains 'metadata', which is information about books.

One metadata item that calibre maintains is 'Series'. This item sets a grouping for books. For example, Winston Churchill's 6 books about WWII all are part of a series named "The Second World War".

To help me get it clearer:

download books to computer. drag and drop to calibre. First time I just then sent the book to my reader, didn't do anything at all. Only had around 10 books.
Next time, do the same, except in calibre I highlighted the book, then went to the edit meta and note the book as which its location was in the series, put in the tag and if there wasn't a description added my own to help me know what book it was, or went to the internet and collected info to create a description.

Here is possibly another terminology difference. You put in the 'tag'. Tags in calibre are single words that can signify anything of meaning, but they are very seldom used for series. The 'Series' column is used for that. You might be thinking of genre?

For those which were in a series, I made sure to add the last one first, then the second and down the line so when they showed up in the list they were in correct order.

I don't understand what you are doing here. Are you adding something to the Series column? If you sort by that column, the books are ordered properly. The order you entered the series has no impact at all.

Then, sent them to my reader. Later when I turned on my reader to read a book, the books were there on the screen, but the books were "all messed up". I was looking at the screen, maybe I should have used my brain and not expected the collections, where it shows all unread books and realized they wouldnt' show them in any order.

The 900 has a list of unread books? My 300 doesn't, so I don't know what that looks like.

But again, we need to be careful about terms. You used the word "collections" and then said it shows "unread books". Is the 'unread book' collection inside the 'Collections' group, or somewhere else? Do you have a tag named 'Unread'?

Have you asked calibre to make collections from tags and series? If you haven't changed the default, the answer is 'yes'.

I went to collections and some are still out of order, one in one and other in another theme (murder, romance, and such)

These seem to be genres (themes is a fine word, once we agree). In calibre, they would be tags. If you haven't changed the defaults, calibre will add a collection for each tag, and then put each book with that tag into the collection.

Another point: if you haven't change the default of the 'preserve user collections' checkbox, then calibre will not clean things up. If a book with tag "Whazzup?" is sent to the device, it will appear in a collection named "Whazzup?". If you later erase that tag and change it to "Nuttin", then send the book again, that book will now be in both the "Whazzup?" and the "Nuttin" categories. You must clean up the categories by hand on the device view.

Mybe I just need more patience and try to figure it out better, when my brain decides to function. Note to self: Do not try to make sense of reader and anything connected to it when brain is in stupid mode.

I suggest that you play with it. Erase all the books from the reader (saving them first if needed), then send one book. Look at what is put on the reader, trying to identify where each collection/entry/whatnot came from. I am sure that you will quickly see the pattern. Test it by sending another book, but this time predicting what will happen. Check and modify your understanding as needed. In very short order you will have the system down pat.