Coordinating Calibre, CC, and a reader

[tamhas]

A while back, I got Calibre Companion on my Android phone because it would allow me a portable way to browse through recent books to look for something to read. My Kindle keyboard had a number of collections, including Read for books I was finished with and Defer for books I didn't want to read right away, but I wasn't giving up on altogether. When I would sync Calibre with the Kindle, I would push new books into Calibre and refresh the collections from the Kindle, which would then show me all the books moved to Read.

That Kindle died and I have a new Paperwhite. There turned out to be no way to push the collections from Calibre to the Paperwhite without jailbreaking the Paperwhite, so I elected to forget the Read collections and remove books from the Kindle when they were read. So, I am thinking I will have a Read collection, move books to it, then update Calibre based on what is in that collection. I created a new Status column for Read plus all the other collections, so I can easily see what is unread. I suppose that I should use that column instead of collections to organize things in CC going forward.

But ... and here is the question ... it is going to be in CC when I am looking at the summaries that I decide something needs to move to Defer. Does that mean I need to do that move on the Kindle and wait to refresh CC or is there a way I can change the status in CC?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by tamhas

A while back, I got Calibre Companion on my Android phone because it would allow me a portable way to browse through recent books to look for something to read. My Kindle keyboard had a number of collections, including Read for books I was finished with and Defer for books I didn't want to read right away, but I wasn't giving up on altogether. When I would sync Calibre with the Kindle, I would push new books into Calibre and refresh the collections from the Kindle, which would then show me all the books moved to Read.

That Kindle died and I have a new Paperwhite. There turned out to be no way to push the collections from Calibre to the Paperwhite without jailbreaking the Paperwhite, so I elected to forget the Read collections and remove books from the Kindle when they were read. So, I am thinking I will have a Read collection, move books to it, then update Calibre based on what is in that collection. I created a new Status column for Read plus all the other collections, so I can easily see what is unread. I suppose that I should use that column instead of collections to organize things in CC going forward.

But ... and here is the question ... it is going to be in CC when I am looking at the summaries that I decide something needs to move to Defer. Does that mean I need to do that move on the Kindle and wait to refresh CC or is there a way I can change the status in CC?

I am not sure what you want to do, so let me say back to you what I think it is.

You have a Kindle Paperwhite that you use for reading. You have decided, or been forced to decide, that the Kindle's organization ability (read, collections, etc) doesn't meet your needs. In particular you miss the ability to mark a book read.

You have been using CC as a search engine to find books you want to read. Those books are already on your kindle (?). Once you find a book you can look it up on your kindle using title or what-have-you.

Because of the Paperwhite's limitations, you are now exploring whether you can use CC to keep track of which books you have read. You want to be able to mark a book read (or something equivalent) in CC and have that information propagate to calibre.

Assuming I have the above right then the answer is yes, you can (mostly) do what you want in CC. CC has a built-in "Read" status that can be synchronized with calibre using the wireless device connection. CC also has a read date that can be sync'ed but I am not sure that is useful to you. The caveat is that CC's read status is three-valued boolean (yes/no): Yes, No, and empty. If you can encode your information into those three values then job done.

I use Yes (green check) for "have read", No (red x) for haven't read but want to soon, and empty for anything else. I also have a calibre custom column (fixed set of values) where I store priorities other than "read soon". I can modify the yes/no column in CC, but cannot modify the priority column. You could use No for "Defer".

If necessary you could consider using the read date column to encode other information. For example, 1 Jan 1900 could be priority 1, 2 Jan 1900 could be priority 2, etc. The problem is semantic inconsistency, the meaning of the column is defined by its value instead of being consistent, but that might be OK with you.

See the CC FAQ category Marking books read and syncing that information with calibre for more information on syncing.

Did I answer your question?

[chaley]

FWIW: next time you need to replace the Kindle you might want to consider one of the Android e-ink devices. I have both an Onyx Afterglow 2 and a Energy Systems Pro (a rebranded Boyue T62+), and I like both of them. Their battery life isn't as good as a dedicated reader but it is good enough for me. Using my Afterglow I can read three books over a week on a single charge (couple of thousand page turns).

[tamhas]

After thinking about this some more, I have come to the conclusion that, regardless of what I do on CC, I have to move the books out of the unread pile on the Kindle. So, completing a book on the Kindle, I will move it to Read. Reviewing a book on CC that I decide to put off reading, I will move it to Defer on the Kindle. I suppose I should also have a Collection on the Kindle for books I decide I never want to read. Then, when I next sync the Kindle and Calibre, I will update the status in Calibre of books in those three collections and then delete Read and Won't Read from the Kindle. A bit clunky, but we'll see.

My wife replaced her Nook with an Android reader so that she could find books to read with CC. That is clearly simpler, but I really like the e-ink screens and the size and weight of the Kindle.