The last update was about finding your next book on Discover. This one is about what you find when you get there, and about bringing Discover a little closer to your own library. There's a lot of it, so here are the highlights.
Chapter summaries, now with a cast list
Chapter summaries have been on community book pages since August. Sixteen more books have them now: all six Earthsea books, from A Wizard of Earthsea to Tales from Earthsea, and ten classics - Dracula, Frankenstein (the original 1818 text), A Christmas Carol, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Around the World in Eighty Days, The War of the Worlds, The Metamorphosis, Heart of Darkness, Emma and Moby Dick.
These come with something new: character notes. Each chapter introduces the people who first appear in it, in a box below the summary, so they stay hidden until you open that chapter.
They also have a Cast list. Tell it how far you've read and it shows everyone you've met so far, each described as they are when they first appear, and how many more are still to come. It's the page you wish the book had when someone turns up in chapter 30 and you can't remember who they are.
Spoilers are taken seriously throughout:
- Chapter titles are hidden unless you tick Show chapter titles, since a title alone can give the game away
- New characters stay hidden unless you tick Show new characters
- Summaries and cast lists are marked "May contain spoilers"
- Your choices are remembered for each book on that device, including how far you've read in the Cast list
Books with chapter summaries now have a small book badge on their covers across Discover, so you can spot them at a glance.
"On Discover" on your book pages
Your own book pages now have an On Discover section at the bottom, in purple, so it's never mistaken for your own details. Swipe through it to see:
- The series the book belongs to, with covers, and which of them you have
- What other readers think of it
- The author, with a short biography
- The awards and lists on Discover that it's on
Discover's series pages know about your library too. Each book shows where you are with it - Finished, Reading, Paused, Did Not Finish or In your library - and the page tells you exactly how many you have: "You have 3 of 4 books from this series".
If you'd rather your book pages were just about your copy, you can turn the section off in Dashboard, then Preferences.
Over twenty new series
- Isaac Asimov's Foundation, The Hunger Games (with both prequels), Arc of a Scythe, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Murderbot Diaries, each with a story order alongside where it differs
- Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar: all 41 novels across its twelve series, from the Mage Wars to Darian's Tale, with a chronological order through the kingdom's history
- Dragonriders of Pern: all 24 novels and two story collections, in the order Anne McCaffrey asked them to be read
- Honor Harrington, The Stainless Steel Rat, The Old Kingdom and the Enchanted Forest Chronicles
- The Hyperion Cantos, Wayfarers, Vampire Academy and Bloodlines, Red Queen, The Folk of the Air, Ranger's Apprentice (with the Early Years prequels in story order), Stephen King's Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney novels, Remembrance of Earth's Past (the Three-Body trilogy), The Scholomance, and all 21 of Enid Blyton's Famous Five
Author pages now show the series their books belong to, with a link to each reading order, and the lists that feature them, such as award winners. Mercedes Lackey's page leads to Valdemar and all twelve of its series.
Finding things
One search box for everything. The box at the top of Discover now finds books, authors, series and lists together - including the author of a book you search for, its series and the award lists it's on - with a See all for each. It waits for you to press Enter, so it doesn't whisk you away mid-word.
Better results first. Book searches put the closest matches at the top - the exact title, the author you named, whole words before partial ones - rather than simply the most popular books. Searching "king" no longer buries Stephen King.
Award years. Ten awards, including the Booker, the Hugo and the Pulitzer, now have a Year by year view showing every winner alongside that year's shortlist. Shortlisted books have their own pages, and a year still waiting for its winner says so, with the date where it's known.
Easier browsing. Popular, Top Rated and Recently Added show one row each, with a See all for the full list. The book browse and each genre page now load more as you scroll, and every book can be reached in every sort. Before, the list stopped at 2,000. The Authors page opens faster and reaches every author, too.
New on Discover. A section near the top of Discover shows what's been added lately: new chapter summaries, new series, blog posts and site updates.
In your own library
- Crop and rotate your own pictures: covers and photos of your books, wishlist pictures and note pictures, as you add them or afterwards
- Other editions you own: a book's page now shows "Also in your library: Paperback · 1999" for each other edition you have, linked, and says if you've read it. Adding another edition just adds it, without asking if it's a duplicate
- Covers for Kindle books: books without an ISBN, which includes most Kindle books, can now find a cover by title and author. Library Health can do this book by book, without opening each one
- A refresh notice: when a new version of Book Assembly is ready, a small notice offers to refresh, which helps if you keep the app open for days
- Stay signed in longer: 14 days instead of 7
Better imports
- Did Not Finish comes across. Goodreads books on its own Did Not Finish shelf now arrive as Did Not Finish. Before, they were arriving as not started
- You choose which shelves mean what. When importing from Goodreads or LibraryThing, shelves that look like "did not finish" or "paused" get a tick box, so you decide whether those books get that status
- Earlier reads are kept. A book you're reading again, or have put back on your to-read list, keeps its earlier read, so it still counts for that year
- Undo shows its progress. Undoing an import now shows a progress bar - "Removing 120 of 450 books..." - and tells you plainly if anything couldn't be removed
A tidier catalogue
Behind the scenes:
- Authors who were split across two or three pages now have one: 146 duplicates were combined, bringing together the books of Robin Hobb, Leo Tolstoy, J.M. Coetzee and more than a hundred others
- Pen names now have their own pages, linked to the writer behind them. Barbara Vine's novels have a page of their own, linked to Ruth Rendell's
- About 60 author pages were showing someone else's books, where a co-author, editor or translator had been mistaken for the author. They're fixed, and new books are now checked so it doesn't happen again
- 505 book titles lost a bracketed note on the end, such as "(Penguin Classics)"
- Fuller biographies for 97 well-known authors, from Aristotle and Bram Stoker to Ian Rankin and Zadie Smith
As always, the full list of changes is on the About page.
Spotted something wrong, or a series you'd like to see? Get in touch or join us at r/BookAssembly.
