This may seem a rather personal, and even silly, reflection on how to use e-reading apps, but it made enough of an impression on me to change my reading preferences, and probably which books I’m going to read and how soon. As readers will probably remember, I recently bought a Chromebook. I’ve loaded it up with Readium and copied my EPUB library over to it. And I suddenly found myself getting reacquainted with the contents of my archive – because Readium defaults to cover icon view for its library.

I’ve been using Bookari for the longest time as my e-reading app of choice (when not reading Kindle titles, obviously). For the longest time, I also had its library screen set to list view, with all the details of the books. Only, I was losing track of what I had on file, and fixating on the last few titles to show.

Now I have my Bookari library set back to icon view, on my phone and all my tablets, I have a far better perspective on my whole collection. I’ve been reminded of good stuff I forgot about. I can browse far more easily and pick up titles put aside long ago. And yes, this may seem like a dumb obvious call to make, but it shows me how we unconsciously get stuck into habits that then influence our reading behaviour. That one simple change of habit will give me a more enjoyable and rewarding e-reading experience in future.