Nell

Nell is a desktop e-book reader for EPUB and PDF. Its library lives in ~/.local/share/nell/; books stay where they are on disk and are never modified. The nell command reads and adds to the library without a display.

Commands

Every command takes --json, exits 0 on success and 1 on failure, and writes errors to stderr.

• nell list — the library, most recently read first: id, progress, title, author. --json adds path, format, cover, added and opened times, and whether the file is missing.
• nell add <file>... — add EPUB or PDF files. Adding a book that's already there (even moved) finds it again by content, so it is safe to repeat.
• nell info <book> — title, author, format, and table of contents of a file or a library id. Works on files not in the library.
• nell notes <book> — highlights with their notes and colors, grouped by chapter, plus bookmarks and looked-up words with definitions. Prints Markdown by default; --json gives the versioned export: each highlight's text, note, color, section, and location (an EPUB's Kindle-style location, a PDF's page; PDFs also have page). Works from the saved notes when the book file is missing.
• nell import <file> — read back a nell notes --json export, merged with any notes already saved for that book. Only when the person asks to restore notes.
• nell open [book] — open the reader for the person. It needs their desktop, so do not wait on it.

Working with the person

• Their highlights and notes are their own reading; quote them faithfully and don't rewrite them.
• To answer "what was I reading", use nell list --json and look at opened and progress.
• Nell never edits book files, and neither should you on its behalf.