org-books

Reading list management using org-mode. A sample list lives on my wiki here.

Quickstart

;; Set path to the reading list org file
(setq org-books-file "~/my-list.org")

;; A basic template file can be generated using the function `org-books-create-file'.

To add books manually, use org-books-add-book function. To add from urls, call org-books-add-url (or use org-books-cliplink if url is in clipboard).
To give ratings, go to the entry and call org-books-rate-book.
While filing a book, org-books-file-depth tells which headings are to be considered as a category (like fiction or something).
org-books-add-to-top (default t) tells whether to add the book at the top or bottom under the selected heading.

Adding new source

A source for books provide a details function that takes certain input (like a url in case of amazon) and returns a list of title, author and props. props is an alist which gets added to the entry as org properties. Here is the output from amazon’s:

(print (org-books-get-details-amazon "https://www.amazon.in/Algebra-Chapter-Graduate-Studies-Mathematics/dp/0821847813/"))

("Algebra: Chapter 0 (Graduate Studies in Mathematics)" "Paolo Aluffi" (("AMAZON" . "https://www.amazon.in/Algebra-Chapter-Graduate-Studies-Mathematics/dp/0821847813/")))

With the details function defined, write something to make a user facing interface which, after getting the details, calls org-book-add-book function. For an example, see the function org-books-add-url.

As of now there are the following sources:

Manual (input: title, author etc.)
Amazon (input: url)
Goodreads (input: url)
Openlibrary (input: url)
ISBN (input: ISBN, dispatches openlibrary url source)

Using org-capture

For a more flexible setup, you might just want to use org-capture, possibly with a little help from functions present in this package. Directly using capture gives you much more flexibility over the structure and organization of entries. Here we describe a few capture templates that can be used:

Manual entry

(setq org-capture-templates
      '(("b" "Book" entry (file "some-file.org")
         "* %^{TITLE}\n:PROPERTIES:\n:ADDED: %<[%Y-%02m-%02d]>\n:END:%^{AUTHOR}p\n%?" :empty-lines 1)))

Using url from clipboard

(setq org-capture-templates
      '(("b" "Book" entry (file "some-file.org")
         "%(let* ((url (substring-no-properties (current-kill 0)))
                  (url-type (org-books-get-url-type url org-books-url-patterns))
                  (details (if url-type (org-books-get-details url url-type))))
             (when details (apply #'org-books-format 1 details)))")))