If you read a lot, the Calibre e-book Manager is indispensable.

I read a lot. Audiobooks for fiction, e-books for non-fiction and reference. While I used to be an avid public library user, it now seems a lot easier just to find books online. Over the past few years I have collected around 700 books in e-pub, mobi, PDF, deja-vu and other formats.

I adopted the Calibre e-book Manager four years ago. This is an open source application with amazing capabilities:

• Available for Windows, Linux, Apple OSX
• Stores books in a single folder called Calibre Library
• Supports all the major e-book formats, and provides the ability to convert books from one format to another
• Enables the use of meta-data to organize your library into different series and by categories.
• Enables you to serve your library over the network, and read your books from anywhere using a browser.
• Bookmarks and full-text search, copy and paste, and so on.

You can use as many or as few of the features as you want. The readers included with Calibre e-book Manager are very flexible, and include the ability to change font sizes, as well as that all important “full screen” display to remove distractions.

Calibre e-book Manager on a Windows 10 Tablet

Recently I received a CHUWI Hi8 Windows 10 Tablet. I wondered how well it would work as a portable book reader. It works great with Calibre e-book Manager installed. The screen is a bit small, but I can increase the font size, and the device is much lighter than my generation one iPad.

Rather than copying books over one at a time, I found a neat way to install and synchronize the Calibre e-book library with my main computer. I simply use SynchBackFree to mirror my main Calibre library to my CHUWI tablet. So now, every time I add a new book to my main library, the tablet gets updated later in the day. I can take my 700 book library anywhere I go.