Sorting and finding books on Fire

HarryT · 01-31-2019, 04:29 AM

I’ve just bought a Fire HD 8 (an “impulse buy”

), and I’ve found a couple of issues compared to an eInk Kindle:

1. On an eInk Kindle, sorting the library by author gives you books sorted by title within each author. On the Fire, the order of books within each author appears to be completely random. Is there a way to get books sorted by title within an author sort?

2. On an eInk Kindle, there's a page number of the bottom of the library screen, and tapping that allows me to jump directly to books starting with a particular author (in author sort mode) or title (in title sort mode). On the Fire I just get one long scrolling list. Any shortcuts to going directly to particular authors?

I sideload all my books from Calibre, so one solution would be to install CC and use that as a library manger, of course.

tomsem · 01-31-2019, 01:17 PM

In Author sort, titles for the author appear in alphabetical order. Articles like ‘The’ and ‘A’ or ‘Los’ (Spanish) are ignored. So ‘This Will...’ sorts before ‘The Universe...’. Just like how card catalogs were sorted in libraries. I did not see any randomness to it with several of the examples in my library.

To find things, I just use Search. In previous versions of Fire OS, you could press microphone on the keyboard and it would do speech to text, so you didn’t have to type. But that went away. Of course that is still an option with the iOS and Android apps.

Unfortunately there is no way to engage the scroll indicator to more quickly jump around in the sorted list of books. The iOS app (Android too I assume) has an alphabetical index on the right side so you can jump to a given letter for Author or Title sort; they should add that for Fire. In Recent order (the one I use most) they are all deficient in navigating a long list, but then the order is essentially random so it would not be that useful.

HarryT · 01-31-2019, 01:31 PM

Thanks for the help. I've installed Calibre Companion now. By far the best solution to library management for a large library, I think!

01-31-2019, 04:29 AM	#1
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Sorting and finding books on Fire I’ve just bought a Fire HD 8 (an “impulse buy” ), and I’ve found a couple of issues compared to an eInk Kindle: 1. On an eInk Kindle, sorting the library by author gives you books sorted by title within each author. On the Fire, the order of books within each author appears to be completely random. Is there a way to get books sorted by title within an author sort? 2. On an eInk Kindle, there's a page number of the bottom of the library screen, and tapping that allows me to jump directly to books starting with a particular author (in author sort mode) or title (in title sort mode). On the Fire I just get one long scrolling list. Any shortcuts to going directly to particular authors? I sideload all my books from Calibre, so one solution would be to install CC and use that as a library manger, of course. Last edited by HarryT; 01-31-2019 at 04:33 AM.

01-31-2019, 01:17 PM	#2
tomsem Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,772 Karma: 26974049 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: USA Device: iPhone 15PM, Kindle Scribe, iPad mini 6, PocketBook InkPad Color 3	In Author sort, titles for the author appear in alphabetical order. Articles like ‘The’ and ‘A’ or ‘Los’ (Spanish) are ignored. So ‘This Will...’ sorts before ‘The Universe...’. Just like how card catalogs were sorted in libraries. I did not see any randomness to it with several of the examples in my library. To find things, I just use Search. In previous versions of Fire OS, you could press microphone on the keyboard and it would do speech to text, so you didn’t have to type. But that went away. Of course that is still an option with the iOS and Android apps. Unfortunately there is no way to engage the scroll indicator to more quickly jump around in the sorted list of books. The iOS app (Android too I assume) has an alphabetical index on the right side so you can jump to a given letter for Author or Title sort; they should add that for Fire. In Recent order (the one I use most) they are all deficient in navigating a long list, but then the order is essentially random so it would not be that useful. Last edited by tomsem; 01-31-2019 at 01:20 PM.

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01-31-2019, 01:31 PM	#3
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Thanks for the help. I've installed Calibre Companion now. By far the best solution to library management for a large library, I think!