Hooked on a Nook and what a pain in my ascii.

I have 302 books in my Nook Library.

For better or for worse, I am wedded to the Nook architecture, unless I decide to trot down the path so many others have of un-DRMing their books and putting them on any device they so please.

But what drives me nuts is that with all the competition out there, there is no incentive for them to improve their system.

Trying to read online or on a phone.

If you’re reading a book online in your web browser (NOOK for Web), you get bonked out every few hours. You aren’t told that you’re logged out – you just can’t read the next chapter. So you’ve got to go to the main page, log in, find your book, and start reading again. If you’re lucky, the system has remembered where you are, and you can pick up at the next chapter.

If you’re unlucky, it took you three or four tries to get in because the Nook system insists you only have a sample and it’s time to pony up to buy the book. So you play along, click “buy” and it says you already own it. You can’t read it, because web page A says you don’t own it, and you can’t open it because web page B sends you to web page A.

No worries, open it on your phone app! Oh, but your phone is out of memory. And it’s a large technical book, so your phone app screen isn’t very useful. Grab an iPad! ($400 later …) and set it up with wireless or a cell service … urgh.

And I can’t read my three Calvin and Hobbes books I’ve bought using this format of viewing.

Trying to read on a Nook.

I’ve only got the smallest, cheapest Nook (why did I ever give up the one with free cellular download!) and it does not have a lot of memory. No worries, just download books when I’m at a friendly wifi link. If I remember. If I have my charger. If the kids don’t want to read it instead of me.

I could remedy this if I bought a second Nook, I guess.

And I can’t read my three Calvin and Hobbes books I’ve bought using this format of viewing.

Trying to find a book.

I have 302 books. I can’t group them. I can reorganize them, slightly, in alpha order. Sometimes my Nook/Nook App remembers what I was reading last. But I find it difficult to page through books (302) in random order to find something I may or may not have bought or may or may not have archived.

And if I’ve been logged out while reading online, it’s another pain and a half.

Am I the only person on the planet with this many books? Did Nook designers (hardware and software) expect this was just a novelty?

I can’t read my three Calvin and Hobbes books I’ve bought using these formats of viewing.

I have access to a Windows computer. An Apple computer. I have access to an iPad, iPad Mini, and an iPhone. (I have several patient friends who let me experiment on their hardware.)

I can’t read my three Calvin and Hobbes books because I don’t own a Nook HD. Argh. I don’t want one, I’ve maintained that forever. I like my simple little Nook. I can deign to read on the computer. I want to read my Calvin books. Are they that hard to convert to read on the web?

It’s increasingly difficult to share my books with the kids.

You’d think I would have prevented my own stupidity. But, alas, no. I bought my books and the kids books on the same account. I can’t just throw a Nook at them and let them read a book; I have to pre-prep it by archiving all my books, syncing it, turning off wifi, then unarchiving my books online.

I just want a divorce! Divorce my kid books from my adult books. Dumb of me to not keep them separate at the outset. Makes me wonder if divorce decrees now spell out “who gets the apps and digital video library”.

However, Netflix has figured it out, with different login profiles. Each profile has things appropriate or set up as needed. Even if I had to add books to the kid login myself in my Nook account, I’d do it! I just “culled” my books online to show only the kid books, and left 5 “adult” books they might find interesting.

Total count of books to sync with the kids? 149. 144 if you don’t count the 5 adult books I left for them.

Come on Nook, make it happen. Alternatively, someone buy Nook and fix it!