Ebook-reader with good management skills

[R.A.]

Hello,

for years I have been very happy using iBooks on my iPad. Which had never problems displaying all epubs I produced with Calibre.
Having about 1000 ebooks might not be much for the forum participants here - but needs managing.

I seldom look for a ebook using title or author, my typical question is: "what books do I have concerning topic X". So I organized my ebooks within iBooks in collections according to topic.
Which is a feature most ebook-reades seem to have.
BUT: Within the old iBooks-version I could MOVE the ebooks from the general booklist into these collections. So the general booklist contained only the ebooks which where freshly imported and not yet sorted into a collection.

Apple now killed this feature. You still can define collections in the new iBooks-version, but ebooks put into a collection still remain in the general book list. Which therefore is a heap of a thousand files where I cannot see what has already been sorted. Nearly unusable for me now.


So I need a new Ebook-reader which supports management of a large number of ebooks. Besides that I don't need many functions or bells and whistles. Just that all epubs are displayed (I tried Bluefire and PocketBook which could not do that).

Marvin seemed to be a solution, but it is no longer developed and the comments in the AppStore complain massively that dropbox etc. do not work properly.


So I would be grateful for any help.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by R.A.

Marvin seemed to be a solution, but it is no longer developed and the comments in the AppStore complain massively that dropbox etc. do not work properly.

Dropbox *does* work on Marvin 3 and Marvin sxs (white or black icon background with multicolored M).

Dropbox *does not* work on Marvin Classic (red icon background with white M).

Marvin 3/sxs are no longer being developed either but thus far, everything still works (Dropbox, OPDS, etc). Alas, support for other cloud services and Files app leaves a lot to be desired. To be expected as last update for it was still on iOS 10, iirc.

If you have your ebooks tagged properly in Calibre and the EPUBs are embedded with updated metadata (or sent to Marvin via Calibre server which automatically embeds metadata), you don't even have to create collections manually. Marvin supports filtering by embedded subject/tag metadata and Calibre-format series information.

I believe there are other readers that support EPUB metadata as well such as MapleRead, KyBook, etc. I just haven't found one that I like as much as Marvin.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Dropbox *does* work on Marvin 3 and Marvin sxs (white or black icon background with multicolored M).

Dropbox *does not* work on Marvin Classic (red icon background with white M).

Marvin 3/sxs are no longer being developed either but thus far, everything still works (Dropbox, OPDS, etc). Alas, support for other cloud services and Files app leaves a lot to be desired. To be expected as last update for it was still on iOS 10, iirc.

If you have your ebooks tagged properly in Calibre and the EPUBs are embedded with updated metadata (or sent to Marvin via Calibre server which automatically embeds metadata), you don't even have to create collections manually. Marvin supports filtering by embedded subject/tag metadata and Calibre-format series information.

I believe there are other readers that support EPUB metadata as well such as MapleRead, KyBook, etc. I just haven't found one that I like as much as Marvin.

I pretty much agree with all of this.

Prior to this fall, I would have pointed you to Calibre Companion, but very buggy developer's version of the code was mistakenly released and Apple won't allow the developer to revert to the previous version. Right now, the developer seems to be having a lot of problems getting everything fixed and in usable format. Maybe he will, maybe he won't.

I do use CC on my iPad. I simply have to delete CC, reinstall it and re-download all my books every so often. I use the library ability of Marvin on my iPad mini.

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by R.A.

...
BUT: Within the old iBooks-version I could MOVE the ebooks from the general booklist into these collections. So the general booklist contained only the ebooks which where freshly imported and not yet sorted into a collection.

Apple now killed this feature. You still can define collections in the new iBooks-version, but ebooks put into a collection still remain in the general book list. Which therefore is a heap of a thousand files where I cannot see what has already been sorted. Nearly unusable for me now.
...

MapleRead SE seems to be the perfect fit for what you've described. By default, all new books imported are put into the book set "Ungrouped", which corresponds to what you call the "general" booklist, I think.

[R.A.]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Dropbox *does* work on Marvin 3 ...

Thank you very much - seems I was confused by the different versions.

So Marvin 3 is my solution, even though I didn't tag according to collection and I will have to do that manually.

[Memoir74]

Originally Posted by R.A.

Thank you very much - seems I was confused by the different versions.

So Marvin 3 is my solution, even though I didn't tag according to collection and I will have to do that manually.

Worth noting that Marvin 3 hasn't been updated in three years, so any bugs you find are there to stay.

[peaceridge]

Originally Posted by Memoir74

Worth noting that Marvin 3 hasn't been updated in three years, so any bugs you find are there to stay.

You might give FBreader a try. I read in landscape mode and Marvin 3 can't keep up with where I left off - even if I bookmark the page, Marvin 3 often goes to the wrong bookmark. The only thing I don't like about FBreader is the tic marks at the bottom near the page number.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by peaceridge

You might give FBreader a try. I read in landscape mode and Marvin 3 can't keep up with where I left off - even if I bookmark the page, Marvin 3 often goes to the wrong bookmark. The only thing I don't like about FBreader is the tic marks at the bottom near the page number.

Oh no! FBReader is not all that good at rendering.

[peaceridge]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Oh no! FBReader is not all that good at rendering.

rendering - as with pdf's? I don't have any problem with epubs, don't use it for pdfs.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by peaceridge

rendering - as with pdf's? I don't have any problem with epubs, don't use it for pdfs.

Some people have a very, very specific idea on how eBooks should be rendered. Personally, I'm not nearly as particular about such things.

[peaceridge]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Some people have a very, very specific idea on how eBooks should be rendered. Personally, I'm not nearly as particular about such things.

Me either, obviously.