So, I took the advice of folks on this thread, it worked wonders.

1. Installed the KoboTouchExtended plugin.
2. In my "custom calibre library" (books that I have liberated and converted to clean epubs), I connected my Forma and synced all books to the device.

That works. Most of the books now implement all the nicest Kobo features, which I was missing before. Thanks for the tips in this thread. Man, for new Kobo users, it might be worth having a sticky thread like "How to manage books on your Kobo using Calibre" or something. Maybe there is such a thread and I just missed it, but I did try the search and only found bits and pieces. It was not easy to figure out which plugin to use, that I don't need to re-convert the books to kepub, etc., without this thread.