The digital bookshelf

Mon, 14 May 2018 09:45:00 +0000

Two years ago I’ve started to read books on my mobile device. I have skipped the whole e-reader thing and went straight from hard covers to e-books. Many doubt that you can read a book comfortably on the smart phone, but I can tell with certainty that it works well. It is only a matter of changing your habits. However, there is one thing I miss. A hard cover in a bookshelf also represents an association with your memories of the book. Whenever I see a book cover I remember the story. This does not work with virtual book covers. Memories of books I’ve read on my e-book reader fade as they move beyond the display on my phone. To solve this issue I’ve come up with a simple solution. I want to create a bookshelf poster and pin it to my bedroom wall. With this idea in mind I’ve started creating a list of books I’ve read. Now I would like to present you the tool I’ve built to create beautiful post from this book list.

The book list is a simple markdown file. Here’s an excerpt of my bookshelf file:

bookshelf.md

...

![](https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433930311l/20873740.jpg)  
Title: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind 
Author: Yuval Noah Harari  
ISBN: 0771038518  
Comment: Thought provoking, picturesque, outstanding and simply amazing. If you have not a clue about humanities history and how we built our society, this the book to start with.  
Rating: 10/10  
Finished: 11.04.2018  

...

To create a poster from the list I’ve created tudluk.

Checkout the GitHub project page of tudluk.

Tudluk does the following things:

Read the bookshelf.md file
Download the book covers
Build a bookshelf html page
Run a static http server
Provide the docs to create a screenshot with headless chrome

In result you get a screenshot like this:

I will also add a picture of the final poster once it is pinned to the wall.

Epub on Janik von Rotz

The digital bookshelf