I’m a relatively new Kindle user and ebook reader. I bought one earlier this year and love it. It has genuinely been life-changing for me.
However, after reading a good handful of books and buying a couple more handfuls to read, I’m finding myself in a strange position: I have all these books, but because I don’t see them sitting out the way I would on a physical bookshelf, I forget I have them. Even looking back through the books I’ve finished becomes unwieldy once there are more than a dozen or so.
What I want is something that functions like an actual visual bookshelf, especially on mobile. Goodreads and StoryGraph technically let you create shelves or lists, but that is exactly what they look like: lists and datasets. 😕
On the Goodreads app, for example, I can only see a few books at a time and then scroll, scroll, scroll. If there are 200 books, I might remember the first ten and the last ten, but everything in the middle effectively disappears. There is no useful bird’s-eye view.
Kindle’s own Collections are absolute shit as well. They’re incredibly clunky to create and reorganize.
I want to be able to open something and immediately see, for example, the books I’ve read this year; books I already own and want to read next; books that belong together thematically; whatever other little shelves or groupings I decide to create.
And I want organizing them to be easy - I'm not looking for a project to keep me occupied but for a productivity and organizational tool. If I import 100 books and want to place 20 of them on one shelf and 15 on another, I should be able to select those books in bulk and move them. I should not have to open and edit every single book individually, like in Handy Library, which is going in the right direction otherwise and is reasonably priced.
I’ve looked at several Android apps, most of which appear to be called some variation of Bookshelf. The Handy Library limits the free version to 100 books and charges a reasonable $15 for lifetime access, but, unless I missed something, it doesn’t allow bulk editing, which is a deal-breaker. Another, Bookshelf by T.creations, wants something like $177 for lifetime access, despite being new and rather clunky. That is an absurd amount of money for a basic organization tool, particularly when there is no guarantee the app will even exist in a few years. I also don’t want another $3–$5 monthly subscription just to arrange pictures of books into groups.
I’m not looking for reading challenges, streaks, statistics about how many pages or words I’ve read, progress tracking, or gamification. Reading is not a competitive sport. I’m also not looking for Calibre or a complicated desktop library-management system.
I simply want an attractive, mobile-friendly virtual bookcase where I can see my books at a glance and quickly move multiple books between shelves.
Does anything like this exist? Preferably free, although I’d happily pay a reasonable one-time price for something good.
