PRS-T1 How can I tell what I've finished reading?

[pshute]

My T1 will tell me which books I've never opened by putting a little "New" icon on them. But what if I've opened a few for a quick look, or if I'm halfway through several of them? Is there a way to mark a book as being finished?

[speakingtohe]

Other than deleting it I am pretty sure not. I wish there was

I have a way of keeping track using calibre, but it is a pain in the butt.

Even the ability to mark books new again with the ereader would be nice as sometimes they open because I have pressed to long on the main collections button.

Helen

[Hartsock]

I guess you could dog ear the first page or create a note , FINISHED among two possibilities. But you have to open the book.

[pshute]

That's a pity, it would be so much more usable if there was a way. I even tried dog earing the cover, but it doesn't show it in the book listing.

When I bought this reader, I imagined I could just move the books into folders to indicate whatever I wanted, but the GUI ignores the folders once it's found the books.

Collections don't really help either because moving it to one collection doesn't remove it from any others.

Ideally I'd like to even be able to tell which pages I've read throughly (rather than just flipped over). I guess bookmarks work for that, but then they're not really useful as bookmarks anymore because there are so many of them. I could draw an X or add a note to the pages, but that's a pain, and it's really the pages that I HAVEN'T read that I'm interested in identifying.

Is there a way to submit suggestions to Sony? And is there any point (do they listen)?

[speakingtohe]

Sony might listen, but I doubt they would do anything. I love my Sony readers but it seems that for each improvement in one area you lose something in another area.

Your desires seem pretty complex to me.

I used to use post-its as bookmarks but identifying pages you haven't read seems odd.
If it is fiction I either read or I don't. Sometimes I skim through pages and have to look back, but it isn't a conscious decision on my part and how would the ereader know? I almost always skip over the blurbs at the front and rarely read those at the back.

Reference books I refer to when I need to and often don't read half of the pages. Never did finish the Oxford dictionary.

Study material, rarely have I read an entire book and no amount of reminders would make me pick it up unless I had a reason to do so and then I would look in the index for the pertinent information rather than go through unread pages.

How did you handle these things in paper books? A small notebook with a pencil seems the best solution at present.

Helen

[andyh2000]

You should be able to remove a book from a collection on the device. Go into the collection, press the menu button then select "Remove content". Pick which books to remove then hit OK. So you can add the books to your finished collection, then remove them from the original collections.

Andrew

[pshute]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Your desires seem pretty complex to me.

True, but just the ability to mark a book as finished or not isn't too complex, and surely not too hard.

I used to use post-its as bookmarks but identifying pages you haven't read seems odd.

I'd use it in cases like these:
- technical manuals that I need to at least skim every page, but which I also read ahead to find information I need now
- books of short stories, where I let the kids choose which one they want next

I'm happy to accept that not so many people want to do this, so I'll be content with crossing the pages off with handwriting or something.

On the other hand, it's a godsend having the ebook remember which page I was on last for all these books, so why not make it even better?

How did you handle these things in paper books? A small notebook with a pencil seems the best solution at present.

I used to really wish there was a better way. Sometimes I'd mark the pages, but usually I'd either find I had no pencil or not want to mark the book.

But I shouldn't have mentioned the page marking idea, it's diverted attention form the real problem. I've got dozens of books on this reader and I'm not sure which ones I'm really finished with. Perhaps I should experiment with collections as andyh2000 suggests.

[bla]

If you sort your books list by "latest read" then you will, at least, have a list of books you have been reading, personally I have a backup of everything on the reader so I just delete a book I have finished with... but a way of marking/changing the status of an individual book would be a nice feature have "open" for a book you are reading and "read" for one you have finished instead of just "new"

[Bookworm_Girl]

When I am done reading a book I delete it from its current collection, e.g. "Modern Fiction", and move it to a collection with the word read in the title, e.g. "Read - Modern Fiction".

[speakingtohe]

I use calibre to manage my books and use custom columns.
My method is a bit of a pain and got more complicated with the T1 where you have to go to the book list to delete books.
I have a custom column for each reader which is a Y/N column.
Another Y/N for Read and one for TBR
And a text column for my comments which mostly contains page numbers of books not finished.
When I plug in a reader I sort on the reader column. 350,600 or T1. I mark any books that are deleted (ie in custom reader column, but not on device) as read.
Then I then bulk select all the books on the device and mark the reader column.

With the T1 I also mark page number that I am at in unfinished books in the my comments column. Not necessary for the 350 and 600 as they always seem to keep their page. My T1 has lost them twice.

Anyway it is as I said a pain in the butt, but I read a book or 2 a day in the winter and lose track of where I am in a collection as I regularly read on 2 different readers.

Oh well at least I don't have a thousand physical books to deal with

Helen

[jojoba]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

When I am done reading a book I delete it from its current collection, e.g. "Modern Fiction", and move it to a collection with the word read in the title, e.g. "Read - Modern Fiction".

That's a good way of organising it. I'm going to do that.