Oasis Hell

[applesauce]

The new software update is a nightmare. Well worse than a nightmare. I might as well call my Oasis a bloody expensive brick.

I have vision problems and with the help of my husband painstakingly edited the metadata and side loaded with Calibre over 2000 books. This enabled me to be able to see the order of the books I was reading and sort them correctly in collections.

As everybody knows titles in a series are never consistent, nor are books usually numbered.

All my books are placed in collections by the author's name

Jeffrey Archer

All my books are named to this formula

Clifton Chronicles 01 Only Time Will Tell (2011)
Clifton Chronicles 02 The Sins of the Father (2012)

Seriously 100's of hours were wasted. I have no idea what to do to reclaim my independence to read.

I know people have suggested kobo in other threads, but I brought the Oasis because Kobo could not display collections as text either.

Has anybody come up with a solution?

Seriously desperate here.

[Sirtel]

For my part, I gave up on Kindle collections years ago. I use a sideloaded calibre catalog for browsing my books and search to locate a specific book. Much easier and no manual work involved at all.

[hleo12]

Kindle and Collections just don't mix well. I've learned to live with it, but I seriously miss how easy it is to handle books and collections on a Kobo via Calibre.

[Desertway]

Originally Posted by applesauce

The new software update is a nightmare. Well worse than a nightmare. I might as well call my Oasis a bloody expensive brick.

I have vision problems and with the help of my husband painstakingly edited the metadata and side loaded with Calibre over 2000 books. This enabled me to be able to see the order of the books I was reading and sort them correctly in collections.

As everybody knows titles in a series are never consistent, nor are books usually numbered.

All my books are placed in collections by the author's name

Jeffrey Archer

All my books are named to this formula

Clifton Chronicles 01 Only Time Will Tell (2011)
Clifton Chronicles 02 The Sins of the Father (2012)

Seriously 100's of hours were wasted. I have no idea what to do to reclaim my independence to read.

I know people have suggested kobo in other threads, but I brought the Oasis because Kobo could not display collections as text either.

Has anybody come up with a solution?

Seriously desperate here.

Have you read through the firmware thread here, just in case there is something that might help? You may be able to get close to what you had before by using very specific filters and settings.

[applesauce]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

For my part, I gave up on Kindle collections years ago. I use a sideloaded calibre catalog for browsing my books and search to locate a specific book. Much easier and no manual work involved at all.

Any chance you can do a screen photo of how it looks on the Kindle, please?

I need it to be all text, and big enough print for me to read, with no covers.

Before I do it, I want to make sure I can handle it

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by applesauce

Any chance you can do a screen photo of how it looks on the Kindle, please?

I need it to be all text, and big enough print for me to read, with no covers.

Before I do it, I want to make sure I can handle it

Yes, I'll try to do a few photos a bit later.

The catalog is in the azw3 format, so you can increase and decrease the font size. You can choose which sections to include in the settings (listed by title, by author, by series, by tags/genres/another custom category, and whether to add book descriptions to the catalog - those will be in their own section, linked to other sections). Only the descriptions have cover thumbnails, all other sections are just text.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by applesauce

I know people have suggested kobo in other threads, but I brought the Oasis because Kobo could not display collections as text either.

Has anybody come up with a solution?

Seriously desperate here.

I gave up on Kindle Collections after the DXG. I do have a KK3 & a PW3.

The Kobo does display collections and Series as text. You do have to eject & reconnect with Calibre because the Series data needs the book to be already imported by the Kobo.

There is no need with Kobo to create a collection for each author because series & authors both work. I only use collections for my own selection of Genre or collection via a custom Column.

[Desertway]

You can't get rid of the thumbnails entirely, but you CAN use list view with Collections, in an imperfect way.

You start by selecting "List" under Sort options (three horizontal lines on the right side of the library page). Then under Settings / Device Options / Advanced Options / Home & Library / Collections, choose "Show favorites in Library".

The drawback of this view is that it co-mingles our Collections with all of our books. The only option is to force Collections to sort at the top. I tried numbering them, but I have book titles that start with numbers, so that didn't work. Then I stumbled on using an apostrophe before the name of the Collection, and that pushes them to the top. For example, I have Collections named as follows:

'Loans
'Classic Crime
'Science Fiction

Again, all of your books will follow the Collections, and the best you can do is ignore them.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by applesauce

I know people have suggested kobo in other threads, but I brought the Oasis because Kobo could not display collections as text either.

Whoever told you that Kobo can't display collections as text is wrong. I just double checked and yes, the collections are displayed as text.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Whoever told you that Kobo can't display collections as text is wrong. I just double checked and yes, the collections are displayed as text.

But when you browse inside a collection, there are cover thumbnails.

[Sirtel]

I took a couple of screenshots of the catalog on my Oasis. The first one is TOC, the second a page in the author section, the third a book description. Note you can make the font bigger than on those photos.

[hleo12]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I took a couple of screenshots of the catalog on my Oasis. The first one is TOC, the second a page in the author section, the third a book description. Note you can make the font bigger than on those photos.

Do you have a tutorial on how to do this? This looks interesting. I've been trying to find ways of how I can view blurbs/summary since I mostly sideload books and can't always check the book details from the amazon shop.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by hleo12

Do you have a tutorial on how to do this? This looks interesting. I've been trying to find ways of how I can view blurbs/summary since I mostly sideload books and can't always check the book details from the amazon shop.

Do you use Calibre? If yes, right-click on the Convert icon and choose "create catalog". I use the AZW3 format for the Oasis. There are a few additional options to choose from and that's it. After the catalog is created, just send it to your Kindle from Calibre.

[CathyA]

Originally Posted by Desertway

You can't get rid of the thumbnails entirely, but you CAN use list view with Collections, in an imperfect way.

You start by selecting "List" under Sort options (three horizontal lines on the right side of the library page). Then under Settings / Device Options / Advanced Options / Home & Library / Collections, choose "Show favorites in Library".

The drawback of this view is that it co-mingles our Collections with all of our books. The only option is to force Collections to sort at the top. I tried numbering them, but I have book titles that start with numbers, so that didn't work. Then I stumbled on using an apostrophe before the name of the Collection, and that pushes them to the top. For example, I have Collections named as follows:

'Loans
'Classic Crime
'Science Fiction

Again, all of your books will follow the Collections, and the best you can do is ignore them.

You can take one more step to improve things. In your library view, go to the Filter icon on the left side of your screen (3 horizontal lines with circles on them) and select Collections. Now you won't see the books and won't have to rename the collections. You can sort by name or recent, and the list of collections will display accordingly. When you open a collection, it will display as a list, albeit with thumbnails, there's no way to get rid of those.

You can also have a different sort order within collections than at the library level, so if you like, you can have the library show collections by title/ascending and within the collections show books by recent/descending. All collections share the same sort though.

The main problem with this view is that you can't see books that aren't in a collection. So if you add a new book, you have to turn off the filter and sort by recent, then you can add the new book to a collection. After that, you have to reset the collections filter and your sort options.

[hleo12]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Do you use Calibre? If yes, right-click on the Convert icon and choose "create catalog". I use the AZW3 format for the Oasis. There are a few additional options to choose from and that's it. After the catalog is created, just send it to your Kindle from Calibre.

Thank you! I didn't even know this feature existed. Do you just delete and remake the catalogue whenever you add books to your library?