No one else getting crashes in the KF book app?

[saxondawg]

I follow various Kindle forums, and I don't seem to notice a lot of people talking about crashes when opening books. Ironically, reading seems to be the shakiest function of the Kindle Fire. I love the Fire, and am not complaining about it. My first one had some quirks, and Amazon (being the great company it is) replaced it and those same quirks are present. So it's something about my books.

1. I sideload a lot of books I've created with Calibre. I've had Kindle eInk devices, know Calibre pretty thoroughly, and have never had crashes until the Fire. Once one happens, it shuts down reading for a while--on any book--until it can recover. Sometimes I reconvert the book, replace it on the Fire, and it works better.

2. Strange one: "Cloud" books (once called the archive) show Device books as well as what's on the cloud. Both my Fires have done this. The device can't distinguish between my non-Amazon books on the Fire, and those that are Amazon-only in the Cloud. This isn't much of an annoyance at all--just strange.

3. Squashed covers. Again, not much of an annoyance. On the bookshelf, a whole row of covers, or say, three out of four of them in a row, will have the wrong aspect ratio so they appear "squashed" from the top down. Open the book, and the graphics correct. But there's no rhyme or reason to which covers do this. It happens to a shelf at a time.

I use lots of other apps on my KF, and most of them are flawless. Ironic to me that reading is the function with the most glitches.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by saxondawg

I follow various Kindle forums, and I don't seem to notice a lot of people talking about crashes when opening books. Ironically, reading seems to be the shakiest function of the Kindle Fire. I love the Fire, and am not complaining about it. My first one had some quirks, and Amazon (being the great company it is) replaced it and those same quirks are present. So it's something about my books.

1. I sideload a lot of books I've created with Calibre. I've had Kindle eInk devices, know Calibre pretty thoroughly, and have never had crashes until the Fire. Once one happens, it shuts down reading for a while--on any book--until it can recover. Sometimes I reconvert the book, replace it on the Fire, and it works better.

2. Strange one: "Cloud" books (once called the archive) show Device books as well as what's on the cloud. Both my Fires have done this. The device can't distinguish between my non-Amazon books on the Fire, and those that are Amazon-only in the Cloud. This isn't much of an annoyance at all--just strange.

3. Squashed covers. Again, not much of an annoyance. On the bookshelf, a whole row of covers, or say, three out of four of them in a row, will have the wrong aspect ratio so they appear "squashed" from the top down. Open the book, and the graphics correct. But there's no rhyme or reason to which covers do this. It happens to a shelf at a time.

I use lots of other apps on my KF, and most of them are flawless. Ironic to me that reading is the function with the most glitches.

I've never had a crash with the Kindle app. Is it's happening in more then one book?

I do get the squashed covers and it's annoying! I don't have any other issues. If if it's happening with both amazon and sideloaded books there may be something wrong with your device. I would call Kindle Support.

[saxondawg]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I've never had a crash with the Kindle app. Is it's happening in more then one book?

I do get the squashed covers and it's annoying! I don't have any other issues. If if it's happening with both amazon and sideloaded books there may be something wrong with your device. I would call Kindle Support.

As I said, I have called support and they sent me a new KF, which i appreciated--and found that the issues persist with different books. Not a great number of them, but not just one. I also repeat that I suspect now that the problem is not in the device but in something about the way I'm creating my books in Calibre. Otherwise more people would be reporting these crashes. I personally think it's a graphics issue. First books that had the problem had image files embedded. And whenever the Fire has crashed, it's been either on encountering an image or when I opened the book, and it encountered the cover. But this is just a guess.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by saxondawg

As I said, I have called support and they sent me a new KF, which i appreciated--and found that the issues persist with different books. Not a great number of them, but not just one. I also repeat that I suspect now that the problem is not in the device but in something about the way I'm creating my books in Calibre. Otherwise more people would be reporting these crashes. I personally think it's a graphics issue. First books that had the problem had image files embedded. And whenever the Fire has crashed, it's been either on encountering an image or when I opened the book, and it encountered the cover. But this is just a guess.

I know there are certain tags you can't use in a mobi book. I believe tables tags are one of them. There is a thread that links to code tag that crashes a Kindle. I've never had a crash with the KF and I use Calibre for all my books.

I would start by looking it at the source code of the books that is crashing. See if you can pinpoint something they have in common. some of my books has images and no issues there. Are you using the latest Calibre?

How do you sideload? Maybe something is corrupting the books.

[saxondawg]

I think it's just some freak thing (not very scientific answer). I have hundreds of Calibre-formatted books on my Fire, and only a very few of them have crashed it. But it does happen from time to time. I've simply remade the same book in Calibre and it worked fine. so who knows?

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by saxondawg

I think it's just some freak thing (not very scientific answer). I have hundreds of Calibre-formatted books on my Fire, and only a very few of them have crashed it. But it does happen from time to time. I've simply remade the same book in Calibre and it worked fine. so who knows?

Ah I bet it's not the Kindle app then. It could be some of your books were made with a build of Calibre that had issues. I know I've installed a few builds in the last year that had issues but the good thing was when the following Friday came around Kovid had it fixed and I reconverted the books. So maybe look for the books around the same date as the crashers. You may just need to redo them.