digital bookshelf for al-folio

[subhodeeps]

Hi,
I would like to request a new feature.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

This is feature request to add a digital bookshelf to al-folio. Many of us, particularly academics and students, read a lot of books and it would be nice if we could display what we are reading on our website and link them to reviews that we may write for them. Think of it as your own personal (stripped-down) Goodreads running on your own personal website.

Describe the solution you'd like

I have been recently toying with this idea and created jekyll-bookworm for the Minima theme. You can see what it looks like here. Since I am thinking of shifting my academic website to al-folio from the (the now abandoned) academicpages theme, I decided to see if I can implement it in al-folio. I have been modestly successful. You can take a look at my amatuer tinkering here.

I felt other users of al-folio might like this feature and I would be happy to send a pull request (you can, of course, take this idea ahead on your own).

There are however some issues that needs improvement:

• the reviews are not displayed properly on phones and I can't seem to fix it, in general it can do with a lot aesthetic tweaks
• it would be nice to have pagination in the bookshelf but I don't have the required expertise to do it quickly

Describe alternatives you've considered

I could not find an alternative or existing solution to what I was looking for: a digital bookshelf and a book review management system. I would be happy if you can point me to something that can implement this in a more polished fashion.

Additional context

I am not an expert in web development and I admit my attempts are probably amateurish but I would be happy to get your inputs and see if something like this can be incorporated into al-folio.

Best,
Subhodeep

[asboyer]

@subhodeeps I took a look at your personal website and really liked what you've done with your bookshelf. I made an attempt to do what you were talking about on this al-folio template. I actually prefer the look of yours, as well the different statuses for each book you're reading.

[george-gca]

If you manage to implement this, would you mind sending a PR? Maybe you could also add the subscribe via email that I saw you have in your site to this template? It is a feature that have been requested a while ago (#2097).

[asboyer]

Yeah, I can do that. I'll make a PR when I've got those.

[subhodeeps]

Hi, in the original post I had included my edits to the al-folio theme as well https://github.com/subhodeeps/al-folio and the statuses of the books can be implemented by adding a separate layout for the books and the front-matter https://github.com/subhodeeps/al-folio/blob/master/_layouts/books.html.

[eolesinski]

@subhodeeps this is such an incredible idea! I really like how the bookshelf looks on your website. I've been thinking about pulling in your changes here (unless you were waiting to open a PR). The only thing I noticed is that on Safari it seems like the books on your website are very stretched (only showing one per line). Not sure if this is an issue with my computer or if you experienced the same?

[george-gca]

Can you submit a PR with this? I've seen a few users asking for it.