5.2 KiB
Reading List Index
Once upon a time I read somewhere that smart people take notes about the books they read. Being somewhat of an egomaniac I also like to be able to track how many books I've read and how long it took me to finish them. Lastly, it took me three chapters once to realize I was reading a book I'd already read a long time ago.
This will be the index page that ties together all my reading list documents for the books I've read.
I'm trying to create a workflow for reading (is that too much? Am I making reading a job? Nah.) When I decide to read a book, I'm going to create a note. Once finished I will update with my thoughts/review/highlights.
That's not too much, is it?
Ebook Directories
All my ebooks live in a directory on PHNAS02 (under `/archive/ebooks/) with the following sub-directories. This directory is archived to ISO once a month (currently about 10GB)
ebooks-master
- Epub ebooks. This is the master list of well-formed epubs.
ebook-overflow
- ebooks-overflow - either non-epubs or related collections of epubs
- 2600 - (epub) A small collection of 2600 Magazines
- comics - Misc cbr/cbz collection
- linuxjournal - (epub) Linux Journal Magazine (2011 - 2019)
- pdf - Books in PDF format
ebook-unsync
- ebooks-unsync - random collections of misc formats and non-well-formed epubs
- Complete Peanuts 1950-2000 (CBR) Display issues on ReadEra
- Computer Magazines - Random classic computer magazines in PDF format
- Foxtrot Comics - (CBZ) Display issues on ReadEra
- epubs-misc - Miscellaneous unchecked epubs
- epubs-triage - Checked books that need cleaned up (TOC, spell-check)
- epubs-unprocessed - books to check for formatting or layout errors
- epubs-x - erotic ebooks
How?
Calibre
- As of Oct 2021, I've imported all my epubs into Calibre and am using it a library because of ease of handling meta-data and the sheer number of solutions that are compatible with the calibre database. The latest version of Calibre and calibre-server is installed on overlook
- On the phone and the tablet I use Calibre-Companion to access and download titles from the ebook library. I use ReadEra Premium to read because it renders the most file formats and synchronizes books, progress and annotations between devices.
Libby
- Working for OverDrive, I have long been only a casual fan of Libby. I am hoping to change that since I've spent years looking for a cross-platform reader that allows me to highlight, take notes and sync between the web, phone and tablet and have only found Libby. ReadEra is awesome for books I own, and it does sync between the phone and the tablet, but has no web interface. Besides, Libby lets me sample books and helps me discover new books. Lastly, the audiobooks interface on Libby is first-class. I need to listen to more books, too.
ReadEra Premium
- I bought the ReadEra app for Android a few years back and I keep coming back to it. I can import books from anywhere and they'll sync via Google Drive between my phone and tablet. If there was a web client, it would be perfect. It supports notes and highlights and allows exporting them to anything that supports Android sharing.
Bookfusion
- Dec 2022. I'm not using this. I still feel sketchy about my files in someone else's cloud. I have access to it until next fall, so I'll check periodically to see if there are new features that change my mind, but it's mostly unused.
- Oct 2022. On a whim, I subscribed to Bookfusion. It's a service that allows you to upload books, and it syncs all your books, bookmarks and notes between devices. I opted for the Casual plan. It's the lowest price ($19/year) and it allows 5 GB of uploads. I checked my ebooks-master directory, and it's only 1.5 GB. Even if I included my PDFs, it's still only another 1.3 GB. Both would be well within the 5 GB limit. My reasoning was that if I saw something this cool in a store, I'd totally pay $20 to try it. So I guess we'll see if this will supplant my Calibre system (which up to this point has been working really well, but hasn't been without its idiosyncrasies)
Notes
These one-liners were useful when I kept all my reading notes in a uniform format in markdown. Things have changed and while my notes are back in markdown, I don't these will work anymore. I'll keep them here as reference just in case.
Get reading list by finished date (via terminal in ncnotes directory)
List all books with a start date (or 'unknown')
grep "\*\*Started Reading\*\*" Reading\ List*.md | awk -F':' '$3 ~ "^ ([1-2][0-9]{3})-([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{2})" || $3 ~ "^ unknown" {print $3, $1}' | sort
List all books with finish date (or 'unknown')
grep "\*\*Finished Reading\*\*" Reading\ List*.md | awk -F':' '$3 ~ "^ ([1-2][0-9]{3})-([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{2})" || $3 ~ "^ unknown" {print $3, $1}' | sort
List all books with no finish date
grep "\*\*Finished Reading\*\*" Reading\ List*.md | awk -F':' '$3 ~ "^$" {print $3, $1}' | sort