Books for Mac

User Reviews

• Good freebie

  v1mFebruary 17, 2011

  Pros

  Clean interface; good import and export capabilities; fast look-up; price

  Cons

  Slightly unstable with periodic crashes; poor cover look-up

  Summary

  This is a fine coding effort, now open source. It's far from perfect, but bear in mind there is nothing else free that can touch it on the Mac. The nearest competitor is $40.

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• Nice interface but not always great at finding the book

  c0mefr0mawaySeptember 9, 2009

  Pros

  The interface is much like iTunes and that makes it accessible for most. I'm finding it useful to start tracking books I've read; that way when I'm uncertain as to whether I've actually read a book, I can consult Books.

  Cons

  The program doesn't deliver consistently and effectively with the Canadian versions of many books leaving me to spend time trying to find the book and the cover art.

  Summary

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• Useless for readers who already have a book list

  michael_shannonJuly 28, 2009

  Pros

  This might be okay for people just starting to catalog books they've read.

  Cons

  Import function is hopeless. I tried to import my existing list of 313 from Excel -- using only four fields -- and it never imported more than three.

  Summary

  If you want to start from scratch, fine. Otherwise stay with your spreadsheet.

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• Ignore my last Review - My Mistake

  Jason OwensApril 8, 2006

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />It would seem I was mistaken in my last review so would like to extend my apologies to the developer. I have since downloaded the alpha10 version of Books and am very impressed. The user DOES have the ability to specify genres and to change the default pulldown genre list to a list specified by the user. Clean, attractive and un-fussy interface, efficient importing and a good help file. I agree with other reviewers that the quality far exceeds most freeware. A very good application which in other hands would be shareware. Recommended!

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• Good App

  benson86March 8, 2006

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />This is a solid book cataloguing app which i have used for my extensive book collection. Great features include searching sites using any information, smart lists, and ability to add own fields. The main problem i had was being unable to save genre catagories which apparently has been updated in this version. This addition is what put it into the five star category A couple things i'd like added: the ability to change info in the list view, able to search multiple sites for matches if the first turns up nothing, and being able to put books into more than one list. But for a freeware program, nice work!

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• OK...but One Major Flaw

  Jason OwensMarch 4, 2006

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />This is a nice little app which I *would* choose to use without hesitation...BUT...you are unable to either amend the 'Genre' categories OR add your own. This is very limiting when it comes to sorting. Anyone with a sizeable book collection will no doubt have particular, often esoteric interests, and their library will reflect this - but 'Books 3.0a8' won't. For example, I have a large poetry collection but am unable to sub-categorise the corresponding entries,(i.e modern/french/irish/american), but have to lump them under the pre-defined, vague "Poetry" heading. A glaring omission which may not seem much but is certainly making this user look to other products (&amp; it's one I don't mind paying for either, so shareware it is).

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• Good for a free product

  mfc2December 19, 2004

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Books is a great free program that will surely get better with time. If you are serious about managing a large collection of books, however, you should consider some of the better programs out there. I compared Books, BookTracker, and Bookpedia. I had been using FileMaker Pro to track books, but automatically downloading information from a site like Amazon is a time saver. Although Books is nice because it is free, Bookpedia is the better product. I went ahead and paid the $18. Unlike Bookpedia, Books does not have the concept of categories, it makes you look up information by ISBN, and it was noticeably slower on a database of 700 books. Aside from being free, one way Books is better than Bookpedia is the automatic filling of the Genre category. In Bookpedia, you are likely to get a meaningless Genre, such as "Adult Non-Fiction." If you are going to spend money on one of these programs, Bookpedia beats out BookTracker because you are not restricted by ISBN when looking up book information. I was also unable to get my existing book library imported into BookTracker, which made it difficult to test the program. I also reviewed book managers for Windows. Book Collector by Collectorz.com is a good one. It has some nice organizational features that are not found in Bookpedia.

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• Wonderful Gift to the Software World!

  Dan LockeNovember 9, 2004

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />This is a simple, comprehensive, inexpensive solution for keeping ones bookshelf under control. Download it and use it!

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• Fantasic app

  mistertimNovember 3, 2004

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />This is the best software I've tried, on any platform, for managing my library of books, and I have thousands of them. The auto-fill works well, and the author has been responsive to requests for additional libraries, which has helped me immeasurably. And it's free, and always will be - what more could you ask for at that price! Keep up the good work.

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• best

  Sorin PaligaAugust 16, 2004

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Best of its type, like BibDesk for biblio. I feel a burden to not have continued the Romanian localization, as I did prior to version 2.x.x, but I shall do it again, when with less problems.

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