Out on the road, I’ve had time to fully investigate my Calibre-Web setup. I wrote a short post about it, but this is an update on using it and whether it’s worth the setup time.

You launch it, of course, via a web browser. I use TailScale to access mine to keep it secure. It has a nice layout with several options for how you want to sort your books. At the top, I have a Random Books section, which is a nice feature that shows you four random books from your collection. I have to admit, I see books that I don’t remember getting. Which is kind of cool; it’s almost like looking at your own personal indie bookstore.

You click on a book, and you can see the metadata, rating, description, and whether you’ve read it or not. All things that you download through Calibre when you import your books. There is an in-app book reader which opens a new tab and allows you very minimal options to read the book. I would never use this; it’s very bare in layout options and, critically, has no scrolling option. Most importantly you can download the books in whatever format you originally set up in Calibre; epub, PDF, etc. If you are an Apple user, that download will open up in Apple Books, which is a pretty good eReader. I don’t read many books in it, but I don’t mind it.

Overall, I’m glad I set it up. I have my whole personal digital book library with me at all times; I can download and read any book or just browse the collection looking for a lost book or my next read. Nowhere as nice as looking at a bookcase of actual books, but for your digital collection this is a very nice option. I can highly recommend it if you have a large ebook collection.

One thing I haven’t tested yet is emailing books to your ebook reader. I don’t use an ebook reader but would like to get one and give it a go.